A COMPARATIVE-STUDY OF COLOR MEASUREMENT INSTRUMENTATION

A multiplant Quality Improvement Team (QIT) was formed to develop and implement an evaluation program for various color measurement systems as potential replacements for the then-current aging systems. The emph asis of this article is the analytical methodology utilized to evaluat e the various color systems. The evaluation program consisted of two p hases. Phase I was a general overview/review of several systems, while Phase II was an extensive internal comparative evaluation of four mea surement systems. These were Milton-Roy's ColorMate HDS, HunterLab's U ltraScan, Datacolor's CS-5, and BYK-Gardner's The Color Sphere (TCS). The main comparison criteria were interinstrument agreement (agreement between two instruments of the same system), user-Friendly software a nd computer interface capability, vendor amenability to a long-term lo gistical and maintenance relationship, and price. All systems were eva luated by duplicate measurements on various color tiles, yarns, and po lymer flakes - over 1600 measurements on each system. The systems were compared with an instrument matrix, a decision matrix, and a product matrix. The instrument matrix was a comparison of instrument parameter s, software/math treatments, and economics. The decision matrix was a forced ranking of each system by each criteria category (1-4 scale, wi th 1 representing the best and 4 representing the worst). The product matrix accentuated the relative importance of one criterion category o ver another by multiplying the forced ranking by the criticality of th e category. The criticality of a given category was determined by cons ensus within the QIT. The combination of the three matrices allowed th e evaluator(s) to select the color measurement system that best satisf ied the color measurement needs and requirements of their facility and their products. For this evaluation, all of the evaluated systems wer e superior to the then-current aging systems. As a result of this meth odology, one instrument emerged as clearly superior. (C) 1994 John Wil ey & Sons, Inc.