Carestream Contract Manufacturing’s expertise in coating services and technologies provides substantial advantages to customers who want to bring new products to market. As experts who have used their knowledge and experience in the scale-up of hundreds of different fluids and products, Carestream employees can determine whether a product will be feasible and replicable, and if not, can suggest ways to make it more so. Examples of customers who have benefited from using Carestream to optimize their product development include:

• One Carestream Contract Manufacturing customer completed a project to generate pilot samples and went to test-market, using the samples produced for a full year of experiments with developers. The customer then came back, reformulated, took the resulting material and simultaneously went to production, whereupon his company was acquired. This was done at extremely low overall cost, with no capital expense at all, and the acquiring company remains a partner and customer.

• Another Carestream customer wanted full-scale manufacturing in-house, and had budgeted 18-24 months in its own lab to buy a pilot coater and develop a manufacturing process window. Carestream was able to produce a useable product on its pilot coater in two days. The customer now has millions of square meters of capacity on demand, plus a full team qualified to do the work – in an ISO-certified factory at Carestream.

Customers typically bring new product concepts to Carestream fairly early in the development stage. Coating formulations, coating method, and product structure are often modified and fine-tuned as part of the product development process. In a typical process, a consultation is held to discuss the application and determine how Carestream’s technology may be applied. Upon agreement, a three-stage process can be used to effectively control cost:

1. Benchwork: Carestream conducts small-sample testing using its professional team’s extensive knowledge about rheology and coating methods. The benchwork step culminates in a go/no go decision and an initial project plan outlining fluid changes and a set of coating technologies to be evaluated.
2. Pilot Testing and Development: Next, the product is taken to one of Carestream’s pilot coaters for a series of coating assays. A wide range of coating solutions and conditions may be tested. If the customer is focused on getting to market quickly, Carestream Contract Manufacturing’s team may repeat development work frequently. In most cases it is advisable to take time between trials to analyze data in a collaborative team environment. Pilot trials are typically a small cost of a product introduction, so the decision to do frequent or sporadic trials is just part of the overall plan.
3. Full-Scale Production Trials: During the bench and pilot evaluation procedures, Carestream strives to identify the optimal process conditions to successfully transition to the commercialization stage. Many customers are able to take narrow-width pilot coater material to a test market, but usually longer and wider runs are needed. The coating conditions that were developed on the pilot line are now verified or adjusted for larger scale production. Once all parties are comfortable with product design, it can be finalized and the process fully characterized. This is then followed by an ISO certification process involving 3 separate events before the product is considered qualified.

Controlling Costs Onshore

Customers often ask about manufacturing in lower-cost countries. Carestream has successfully brought back production from some of these countries for improved total project and product cost. The explanation lies in the nature of precision coating – there is very little labor per square meter involved, and any difference is overwhelmed by additional yield/lower waste on expensive materials; a strong attention to process improvements shared from other industry experience; and a faster development cycle due to ease of travel and communications. Carestream is proud to be an onshore, fast prototype facility but can also demonstrate long-run cost-competitiveness.

Protecting Customer Confidentiality

The Carestream team goes to great lengths to protect absolute confidentiality of the product development process for its customers by protecting intellectual property fastidiously, with a variety of methods involving firewalls, code names on projects, written material, samples, and product. When it comes to the customer’s market plans, processes and materials, Carestream professionals save only enough information to cover relevant rheology and safety issues. They provide customer tours to see our equipment, but never when another customer’s product is present on the equipment. To assure secrecy, Carestream cannot provide a customer list. No documents or labels are readily identifiable in the plant unless the customer gives approval.

Carestream is an excellent design partner and stands ready to help in the optimization of development costs. The group is often faster and more efficient than customers’ in-house laboratories because of the depth of experience, equipment and people, making it possible to test for numerous variables inexpensively and quickly. Chemical companies, for example, work deep in the technology of molecular design and end-use product tailoring, yet would need to learn 100 years’ worth of coating experience to create the extensive coating toolbox at Carestream.