Paint Manufacturer Improves Their
Process and Saves $$$ by Switching to
BYK-Gardner byko-chartsŪ

One of the largest architectural paint manufacturers in the
U.S. had problems with the inconsistencies of drawdown
charts supplied to them by an industry leading chart manu -
facturer. Although they never realized it, the measured L*,
a*, b* and gloss values of incoming charts varied substan -
tially from print batch to print batch. These variances
caused, in several cases, erroneous rejections of
paint batches. These variances also caused the addition of
pigment to improve contrast ratio when in fact it was not
necessary, resulting in wasted raw materials and increased
production costs to the paint manufacturer. It was later
determined that the inconsistent color and gloss of the
charts had caused the paint batches to be rejected when in
fact the paint batches had actually been within specifi -
cation.

and gloss. Our specification is much tighter than the paint
manufacturer’s specification for color and gloss, and as a
result, byko-chartsŪ have never been rejected by this
customer.

Over the last several years, BYK-Gardner has kept meticu -
lous product consistency records from our print batches.
This data shows the clear superiority of the byko-chartsŪ
versus competitive charts from print batch to print batch.
Copies of the print consistency data versus the competitive
product are available in Application Note 15. Not only are
byko-chartsŪ more consistent than the competition, but
price competitive as well.

Contact BYK-Gardner today to get more information about
how we can help you improve your process and save
money on costly raw materials.

As a result of this costly problem, specifications were
developed by the paint manufacturer for color and gloss of
drawdown charts. All chart vendors must now adhere to
this specification for every delivery of charts. Before any
new lot of charts can be sold, chart vendors must send
samples of each type of chart to the paint manufacturer for
approval. Only after meeting these rigorous quality
standards can a new lot of charts be sold to them.

By switching to byko-chartsŪ, this paint manufacturer has
realized improved consistency of the black stripe printed on
the drawdown chart. In fact, the variation from lot to lot
has dropped to less than 1/5 of what the variation was in
the past when they used the competitive product. This has
also resulted in improved reliability of their internal contrast
ratio test methods, and other color and gloss test methods.
Improvements such as these provide improved product
quality, reduced raw material usage due to improper batch
adjustments, greater production throughput, and reduced
customer complaints. All of these improvements result in
measurable cost savings in manufacturing and R&D.
To maintain byko-chartŪ color and gloss consistency, BYKGardner
has engineers on site for all byko-chartŪ printings.
We adhere to a rigid BYK-Gardner specification for color