Product Life Prediction of Colorfastness in Furniture Products

Client

Cannot disclose due to confidentiality agreement.

Challenge

A client's custom colored coatings and structural polymeric components of their furniture products aged prematurely in an indoor office environment. The client was unsure whether the entire building's furniture was suspect, and also desired to understand the future service life liability.

The client's major questions to answer were:

• How can the environment be quantified?
• What was the root cause of the color loss?
• Can we continue to offer the 12 year warranty?

Solution

To solve the problem, a quantitative understanding of the indoor environment their product is exposed to was needed. Aspen Research, utilizing Quality Function Deployment (QFD) as a means to develop a test device, identified key attributes required to measure the indoor environment. Important attributes of the device were:

• Identification of the focus spectral range
• Portability of the instrument
• Instrument to be handheld as well as static
• Software and operating system compatible with the client's internal standards

Armed with the quantitative understanding of the environment, Aspen was able to reliably predict how their products were perform over time. This allowed the client to be confident in offering a long-term warranty, a significant competitive advantage.

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