Monthly Tech-Tip | No tracking! No ads! |
A kaolin shipment just came in. "UnReady Freddie" is panicking. He thinks he remembers that products made with the last shipment were lacking plasticity and the fired color was off. He is going to have to come up with different lame excuses for complaining customers this time.
"Ready Freddie" has Insight-Live and has collected years of data on incoming shipments in one searchable place. He knows what to check on each and has fired bars, in-mix tests, particle size checks, data sheets, lots of pictures, notes, etc. He also has traceability - he knows what material batch went into what product. He works with production to do material lot tracking and with purchasing to keep suppliers aware he is testing. Because Ready Freddie knows how materials vary he can compensate recipes and processes so customers see a consistent product.
UnReady Freddie has a few spreadsheets somewhere. But he is busy with other things. Who do you want in charge of product consistency (and company reputation)? Here is what to do next: Have your technician study the page "Testing a New Load of EP Kaolin" (link below). You will be hear from him/her soon.
This picture has its own page with more detail, click here to see it.
Are you the technician at a company producing clay bodies, glazes, and underglazes? That creates a lot of data. Are you storing it in spreadsheets? That’s like filing lab reports in a shoebox! Searching for data ends up taking longer than the test itself. And it is seldom in the format you need, it is not linked to anything else, it doesn't have the information you need. Excel was not designed for this, your lab deserves a database. Databases enable insight. Insight-live.com is the right home for all the data you collect.
Imagine all your lab data in one searchable, structured, secure system — everything hierarchical, linked and accessible. Being able to compare results across time, batches, and processes. Having a full data trail. For example, maintain master recipes of everything and track their evolution — what changed, why it changed, and how it performed. Maintaining a file system full of thousands of spreadsheets is great for burying data.
Articles |
Setting up a Clay Testing Program in Your Company
Set up a routine testing pipeline and start generating historical data that will enable your staff to understand your source materials and maintain, adjust and troubleshoot your clay body recipes. |
Projects |
Testing a New Load of EP Kaolin
Kaolins can vary in many ways. Yet they are the foundation of all porcelain and light stoneware clay body recipes. It is vital to test each incoming shipment of material. Problematic brands can even require some testing on every pallet. |
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