Posted by Elaine Becker on Mon, Dec 07, 2009
If we put you under the spectrophotometer now, would you show up in deep shades of recession blue? Perhaps.
Tough economic times often mean having to make do with fewer resources to handle the workload. The same workload for developing new colors, adjusting production batches, and approving colors is spread over fewer people. Staff become stressed and can easily overlook color shifts they might otherwise have caught.
And, as you know, color shifts take time to correct. They result in product that either has to be reprocessed or worse, discarded, let alone the time and labor required to make the corrections.
Sometimes, it's the more experienced staff-the more expensive staff-that had to be let go, and along with them, went years of knowledge of how to work the color matching system or operate older, more finicky equipment.
But, just like a painter who switches from brush to roller and roller to spray gun, an investment in the right industrial color matching or color quality control technology can help ease the burden while increasing productivity and reducing costs.
Don't paint yourself into a corner
Investing in technology is one way to keep up with demand while keeping payrolls lean.
Consider these advantages from a new, up-to-date, industrial color matching system:
Fewer production adjustments: The software can automatically calculate and add colorant to bring production back on track.
- Optimized adds: Color matching software can find the one, optimal colorant to add to correct a batch.
- Batch size variation adjustments: Color quality control software automatically calculates accurate adjustments by weight or volume, or even when the batch amounts are not known.
- Faster estimating: Detailed production costing lets you provide estimates faster, beating the competition to the bid.
- Wider color range: Today's sophisticated industrial color matching software databases help you reduce the number of colorants in inventory while broadening the range of colors you can produce.
This recession will end someday (or so they keep telling us). In the meantime, consider how technology can increase productivity, lower inventory, and keep staffing costs in check. Then, focus on the future, one with a bright, sunny, yellow outlook.
Posted by Elaine Becker on Tue, Sep 22, 2009
The latest newsletter of the Color and Appearance Division of the Society of Plastics Engineers contained a noteworthy article that should be read by anyone involved in the coloring of plastics or coatings. Bruce Mulholland of Ticona authors a technical article "Effect of Additives on the Color & Appearance of Plastics". It can be found in the SPE CADNEWS Summer2009 starting on page 14 at:
http://www.4spe.org/technical-groups/newsletters/105
His opening salvo was right on target about how often color is just considered a necessary evil in the product development cycle. His 9 steps of a typical cycle made me laugh, but sadly are all too often true. The article goes on to describe in depth why color cannot be an afterthought in the development cycle.
What I particularly liked was his explanation of the physics of light scattering and absorption and how various additives to a resin system will affect the color. Equations and diagrams are used to explain how changes in the refractive index within the polymer system will change the color. He describes the effects on color in different resin classifications and then goes on to list typical additives and how they affect light scattering and therefore the color. Any color chemist who wants to understand more about these interactions with light and color would benefit from reading this article. This article would also be of interest to anyone involved in the coloring of plastics-from designer and specifier to the development chemist and technician. Even their counterparts in the coatings industry would benefit from understanding the principles described here.
While you may not always like what happens to a color formulation when you put it into a product matrix, at least now you can better understand what's going on and why.