EDITOR’S LETTER
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Q
uality is the ability of a product or service to meet customer needs, requirements, and expectations. It is not an inherent property, but rather it should be defined, applied, and controlled. What does it mean
to produce quality? It means applying well defined methods and sharing a vision. It means using quality operational tools, procedures, people, and skills. It means working with a system that balances all these elements. Quality is therefore the set of factors through which a company creates a product or service that meets effectiveness and efficiency requirements, i.e. customer requests, by optimising the resources used. Quality is a system and it should be pursued as such, through quality raw materials, staff training, and product certifications. This issue of ipcm® includes a large section devoted to the aluminium treatment and finishing fields and it will be distributed at the Aluminium 2018 fair in Düsseldorf (Germany). The interviews included present a few common threads that we would like to share here. First of all, what is the point in certifying a treatment phase and boasting that certification, if inadequate processes or materials are used at the previous or subsequent process stages? Speaking of aluminium, how much does the quality of metal or of the applied paint affects products’ compliance with certifications? In order to offer truthful outdoor resistance guarantees, would it not be more useful to certify a whole treatment cycle rather than just one phase? Secondly, simplifications should be avoided to produce quality. Speaking again of aluminium, the ban of chromium (VI) paved the way to numerous chrome-free alternative solutions that can be combined with a greater or lesser number of previous treatments. Some companies choose a pre-treatment process with acidic phases only, others opt for a combination of acidic and alkaline phases, and others prefer the oxidation flash technology. All these solutions are valid if considered individually, but the choice should be made based on the quality level of end products and not on criteria such as ease of management or investment size. Thirdly, water treatment greatly affects process quality. Purifying and recycling water is not only an eco-friendly choice. If well conceived, it enables to keep the process parameters constant and well balanced. In other words, it creates quality. You will find that all the topics outlined above are further developed in the next pages. This issue however also includes interesting and exclusive contents on the use of powder coatings, new colour collections available, low environmental impact innovations to pre-treat aluminium prior to coating and oxidation, recovery solutions for solvent-based paints, anti-friction coatings, and new resins to formulate better powders for the finishing of heat sensitive substrates. Quality should be perfected with practice and be specifically aimed at a purpose: offering a higher quality than that required is a waste of resources; offering a lower quality certainly leads to disputes.
Alessia Venturi Editor-in-chief Direttore Responsabile
As a publishing company ourselves, we share the mission of a great international publishing house called Condé Nast: Quality is our business plan.
international PAINT&COATING magazine - SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 - N. 53
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