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THE COATINGS GUIDE: AN INTEGRATED TOOL FOR COATINGS DECISIONS
Citation:
Kosusko*, M AND C. H. Archibald. THE COATINGS GUIDE: AN INTEGRATED TOOL FOR COATINGS DECISIONS. METAL FINISHING 99(5):45-46,48-51, (2001).
Description:
The Coatings Guide, formerly known as the Coatings Alternative Guide (CAGE), is a free Internet pollution prevention tool designed to help small-business coaters of metal and plastic substrates identify alternatives as potential drop-in replacements for existing operations. As shown in the welcome page of the Coatings Guide in Figure 1, the guide features three main components: and Expert System, a Coating Alternatives Information feature, and a cost tool as well as additional tools such as the Product Guide and Source Category References. The Expert System acts as a surrogate to the process engineer for coating operations by asking the user questions about their existing process which point to potential solutions and by qualitatively ranking alternatives. The Coating Alternatives Information feature supports the Expert System by providing the user access to information about alternatives and by identifying contacts and vendors. The Cost Tool feature is designed to estimate the cost of converting to lower polluting processes. On the Internet, the Coatings Guide can be found at http://cage.rti.org. This article will use an example scenario to demonstrate the functionality and use of each of the Coating Guide's features.