The Coatings Industry: Leveraging Big Data, AI, and Machine Learning

The coatings industry – including paint – is just one of many industries that are slowly adapting to tech-friendly innovations. Now, with technological advances like Big Data, artificial intelligence (AI), and Machine Learning taking the digital world by storm, the paint and coatings industry can definitely benefit in more ways than one.

But how can the coatings industry benefit from such lucrative and promise phenomena?

In this brief overview, we’ll show you how Big Data, AI, and Machine Learning can help the coatings industry. First, we will discuss how Big Data will act as the foundation for collaborative going-ons in paint and coatings companies. Next, we will delve into AI’s ability to analyze products in this industry. And finally, we will explain how machine learning is the “brain food” that allows for AI to be more essential when people look for paint and coatings products to buy.

Let’s dive in:

Internal Collaborations Using Big Data

“Big Data has already taken over many technological realms in various industries,” says Harvey Norton, a tech blogger at Write My X and 1day2write. “Now, this form of digitalization is muscling its way into the paint and coatings industry. With Big Data pioneering digitalization, consumers are able to have a better experience when buying coating products, asking questions, and following their favorite brand.”

With that said, Big Data can usher in the following advances, when it comes to internal collaborations (or, departments working with other departments in a company):

• Creating ways for customers to browse products
• Allowing customers to find case studies about products
• Allowing company staff to learn and understand today’s consumers, etc.

AI-Driven Product Analysis

Nowadays, AI is going into almost everything – smartphones, tablets, computers, etc. Now, with the coatings industry, even paint is getting into the AI craze. How? By making paint shopping more customizable. 

For example, someone is in the market for some blue paint. However, they want a specific type of blue paint. Rather than having to consult a physical color scale, consumers can use online resources like Sherwin-Williams.com and PPGPaints' Color Visualizer to pick the right color, based on their preferences. In this way, the person who wants a specific shade of a color (like blue, from the example) can get what they’d asked for. 

As for other products in the paint and coatings industry, they can possibly get the same treatment when it comes to AI. Again, consumers can list out their preferences, and then a paint/coatings tool can try and come up with the best solutions and or recommendations, and where to purchase them.

Using Machine Learning For Decision Support

“A coatings company cannot leverage Big Data without machine learning at the forefront,” says Annie Smithey, a business writer at Originwritings and Britstudent. “When the company feeds information into a machine, machine learning takes place by literally ‘learning’ said information. With the information that it receives, the machine or device knows what to expect when being fed that same information again. Therefore, AI acts as the ‘brain’ of a machine or database, while machine learning is the knowledge that AI obtains.”

So, how does machine learning benefit the paint and coatings industry? By offering state-of-the-art decision support. Here’s how that works:

• Ingest: Data concerning raw material properties, plant conditions and final product requirements are fed into the system.
• Analyze: A special engine cleans and transforms the fed data.
• Predict: Machine learning comes in to interpret the data that was fed. 
• Learn: The engine remembers this data and, as a result, automatically improves the current model of the system.
• Measure: System dashboard measures production performance in real-time.
• Results: Decision support (using Machine Learning) helps in the following ways: 

1. Improved Quality Control, 
2. Increased Production, AND
3. Reduced Cost

In short, Machine Learning is essential, as AI does the grunt work in ensuring productivity and measuring. 

Conclusion

As you can see, the coatings industry will continue to evolve just like other industries. This evolution will most likely come from the technologies that are being ushered in at a rapid pace these days. Despite still being in the infant stage in the coatings industry, there is still room for experimentation. 

As the likes of Big Data, AI, and Machine Learning are becoming commonplace in many industries thus far, it won’t be long before the paint and coatings industry adopts these trending wonders in technology.