Prepainted Metals Part Of Changing Manufacturing Landscape

By Jim Dockey, National Coil Coating Association

In the face of new environmental standards, stringent health regulations and skyrocketing materials and labor costs, the coil coating industry continues to deliver streamlined and cost-efficient manufacturing solutions.

What’s more, intense competition in our global economy means manufacturers must focus on lowering costs and maximizing existing resources instead of raising prices. Prepainted metal can accomplish these initiatives, and reduce or eliminate the amount of environmental compliance paperwork with post painting operations.

The National Coil Coating Association (NCCA) has identified 10 indicators that a manufacturer should consider using prepainted metal, including:

1) In-house paint shop expenses are growing. When maintenance budgets are growing and plant capital expenditures are being made in order to comply with ever more strict EPA regulations, prepainted metal and aluminum is often a cost effective alternative to in-house paint lines.

2) Need to lower internal operating costs. Many manufacturers are searching for ways to lower operating costs in order to remain competitive. Through outsourcing prepainted metals, factories can eliminate costly in-house paint operations and the associated expenses of manning the line and complying with EPA regulations.

3) Plant capacity must be increased. By purchasing prepainted metal, plants are actually outsourcing the painting process and can eliminate or greatly reduce the size of in-house paint shops, generating more floor space for other uses.

4) Coating quality needs to be improved. Coil coated metals are uniformly cleaned, pretreated and painted and cured as a flat surface, so that the edge to edge and side to side variability is virtually eliminated. The prepainted part often has two coats of paint, tightly bonded to the metal as compared to a post-painted part, which generally has only one coat of paint.

5) Down-sizing and or combining of plants is taking place. A good time to consider using prepainted metals is when other major manufacturing changes are taking place. Manufacturers can reduce expenses significantly and increase paint quality greatly by outsourcing the painting process.

6) New product models are being considered. Many times when design changes are being made, a prepainted product can be specified and the new design can be more cost effective to produce.

7) Manufacturing bottlenecks are reducing productivity. Many delays in the plant are caused due to paint issues such as stoppage while parts are painted, dried, and cured before moving to the next stage of assembly. These bottlenecks can be eliminated with the use of prepainted metals.

Jim Dockey is Director - CENTRIA Coating Services, and president of the National Coil Coating Association. For more information about processing coated coil, visit www.coilcoatinginstitute.org, or call the National Coil Coating Association at 216-241-7333.

To view more columns by Jim and other columnists, click here.