Priced standardization

HOUSTON. A uniform understanding of products in the paint market and their most important technical properties gives manufacturers planning security and provides clear competitive conditions for proper product development and promotion. Under the umbrella of the ISO organization, test methods and terms relating to paints, glazes and coatings are standardized worldwide.

For example, the determination of hiding power and wet abrasion of coatings is standardized internationally so that manufacturers can advertise a quality class of these properties on the container. During ISO Standardization Week on June 14 in Houston, DAW employee Dr. Nicole Borho was honored for her outstanding contributions to international standardization. The laudatory speech was given by André van Linden, ISO chairman of coatings standardization.

"Fifteen years ago, when I started my work at RMI, I thought that standards were rigid, unchanging sets of rules," Nicole Borho recounts, "Then I quickly realized that many standards that are fundamentally important to us, such as the determination of hiding power and wet abrasion, were only tailored to the automotive industry or were outdated - sometimes there were even no suitable standards at all. That's why we at the Dr. Robert Murjahn Institute were intensively involved in improving the standards and initiated the establishment of the ISO 35/SC 16 subcommittee for analytics, which standardizes the test methods for determining the content of preservatives as well as volatile and low volatile compounds (VOC/SVOC)." Standardization is not the right way to go for everything, knows the chemist with a doctorate, "but when it comes to labelling - for example, applying for and monitoring test seals such as the Blue Angel - good standards are a prerequisite for ensuring that comparable and correct results are measured in-house and by external test institutes - and that DAW can score points in the competitive arena with good quality."

Dr. Nicole Borho received the "ISO excellence Award" for her outstanding contributions to international standardization.