Munsell & Collaborative Testing Services - X-Rite

Munsell Marketing
Using specialized machinery that spreads paints precisely
on paper or vinyl substrates, Munsell Color Services
provides short-run sample cards and quality control tools
that corporations, government agencies, universities and
laboratories worldwide use to precisely represent the
correct color of everything from plastic injection-molded
housings to grades of frozen tomatoes. Going beyond
international, Munsell Color Services has provided some
out-of-this-world help for exact color matching: Cards
made for the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space
Administration are used by astronauts in the International
Space Station to detect when they are dusted with highly
flammable rocket fuel.
“We have always considered it quite a feather in our cap
that supplying CTS essentially sets the standards followed
by laboratories around the world,” said Art Schmehling,
product manager for Munsell Color Services. Munsell
Color Services has been supplying color samples to CTS
and its predecessor organization for more than 30 years
– some samples harkening to the olive drab color of
camouflage paint and fabrics developed during World
War II. The company is now a division of X-Rite
Incorporated, the world’s largest designer and
manufacturer of color measurement instruments and
software solutions that are used in applications as wide
ranging as the graphic arts to the production of industrial
coatings. X-Rite technologies are used to ensure perfect
color matches by everyone from the world’s largest auto
makers to a local printing company.
Czyryca said inter-laboratory testing evolved from the
basic need in commerce for companies to agree on
common standards in weight, volume and other
measurements and the appropriate methods of
conducting measurements. “The last thing anyone
wants is for a supplier to send a railroad car full of
plastics to a plastic injection molder, only to have it
rejected because their instruments don’t agree on
whether the raw material meets spec or not,” he said.
The need for inter-laboratory agreement in color measurement
has accelerated due to three related trends:
acceptance of digital samples to approve processes,
movement of manufacturing overseas, and adoption of
lean manufacturing techniques. “It was much easier to
send a physical sample from central Ohio to Detroit to
approve a process than it is to send a sample from India
to China and then the United States for approval,” he
said. “And with lean manufacturing and zero-balance
inventories, now rejection of lots is much higher stake
proposition because companies don’t have six weeks
worth of inventory sitting on their shelves.”
Czyryca said laboratories in 23 countries contract with
CTS for a performance assessment of their instruments
that measure color and appearance. On a quarterly basis,
CTS sends two chips produced by Munsell Color Services
of a primary color and a slight variation of that color to
clients for measurement. CTS collects and conducts
statistical comparisons of the resulting data, then
offers remedies for readings that appear to be outside
of expected values. Colors of the samples are varied by
quarter because instruments generally don’t have the
same sensitivity of the same parts of the visible spectrum.
“Even though instruments are remarkably sophisticated
these days, they still share some fundamental roots of
disagreement depending on geometry and other
considerations,” Czyryca said.
For more information on CTS, visit the company’s
website at http://www.collaborativetesting.com or write
Christopher Czyryca at cczyryca@cts-interlab.com or call
XXXXXXXXXXXX.
For more information on Munsell Color Services, visit
X-Rite Incorporated’s website at www.munsell.com or
write Art Schmehling at aschmehling@xrite.com or call
1-877-888-1720.