Neural knowledge management solutions for the coating market value chain

The purpose of the protective coating selection help-desk is to aid professional coating users and specifiers to select a coating suitable for a specific purpose. For protective coatings, this purpose is mainly the protection of structural steel against degradation (corrosion) caused by the exposure to their specific environment. The information required is mainly to provide an answer to the basic question: �What is needed to provide a high quality coating cost effectively, safely in an environmentally acceptable manner for a given application and/or operation condition?� The requirements of the application areas of coatings in the basic categories such as wear, corrosion, optical, decorative etc. will be listed. The fundamental requirements related to selection of coating/base material, pre-treatment methods, coating preparation will be assorted to make a list of parameters that include the most important parameters. In addition to these technical requirements, special effort is needed to define the parameters of coatings related to the complete product process including the R&D, productivity (joining, forming etc.), production safety, recycling, and costs. The main input to the parameters required are product information, standards, project reports, publications and to some extent case studies of various coatings research projects and failure analysis.

A virtual formulator (VF) is central to the operation of coating manufacture. Not only does the formulation define the properties of the coating, but it also drives many operating systems in manufacture and purchasing. Furthermore, formulation is a core activity in other industries such as detergents, printing ink, and pharmaceuticals and therefore has wide possibilities for commercial exploitation. With a VF coating manufacturers can improve the time to market. Consequently, coating formulators can improve their development time for developing new coating formulations. Furthermore, VF reduces the cost of laboratory work, while developing formulations in an in-silico environment. The functionality of the system is to present a typical liquid paint formulation in either gravimetric or volumetric form and to carry out both analytical and predictive calculations. It will thus be possible to calculate intrinsic paint parameters such as film density and key weight or volume ratios, as well as operational ratios such as the mill-base to make up volume. Predictive calculations would include derived properties such as opacity and viscosity. Formulations are derived from two main sources, either a library of existing formulations, which are categorised using a simple expert system, or created from a generic rules base. In both cases users have the capability to store and retrieve their own formulations. Formulations can be modified and re-saved to explore alternative formulation options and strategies.

The Knowcoat SDK (Software Development Kit) is a set of tools that enable developers to quickly develop, test and integrate applications that consume services from the Knowcoat Platform. With the SDK, coatings companies can develop cutting-edge knowledge management software based on the Knowcoat Platform and easily integrate it into their existing IT environment. The SDK is the core product for exploitation. Every application will make use of this. We have defined several applications, but are not limited to these applications. It is foreseen that more customer made applications will be exploited in the selling process, after the end of the project.

The Knowcoat Platform is the worlds first service-oriented on-demand knowledge management platform for the coatings industry. The Knowcoat Platform enables coatings companies all over the world to integrate cutting-edge knowledge management functionality into their already existing information technology infrastructure at the lowest possible cost. Built around modern Internet standards, utilising web-services and a service-oriented architecture, the Knowcoat Platform version 1.0 brings the benefits of world-leading knowledge management services to the coatings industry at the lowest possible cost and with minimised risk. Allowing complex integration and development projects to be successfully completed at a fraction of the cost and risk of traditional methods, the Knowcoat platform enables developers to leverage the tools and languages that they already know, and that enterprises in the coatings industry already have. The Knowcoat platform is built on: - An extensible, secure and reliable web-services architecture. - The support for many different programming languages and development tools. - The proven success of many available end-user solutions and applications which have already been built using the Knowcoat Platform. The platform provides knowledge management user applications in the coating value chain with an innovative combination of integrated technologies and industrial standards. The partners will exploit the platform in specific areas of use. The SDK is a comprehensive development environment for software developers in the coating- and other industrial areas.

The hard chromium plating process evaluation will give information about hard chromium plating techniques, coating properties, process parameters, substrate material suitability and about environmental assessment. It will guide the user in decision-making when selecting suitable metallic coating for the end-users product. Hard chromium platters and end-users will get easily the latest information, application examples, and process development concerning hard chromium coating to be used in their plating process. Customers of the hard chromium help desk will be: - Hard chromium coating manufactures; - Hard chromium end-users; - Additionally, there will be indirect use of the hard chromium helpdesk by VTT.

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