How Many Product Painting Recipies Do You Need?

For custom coaters and some OEM manufacturers, finishing recipe flexibility is not a luxury. It is a core operational requirement. Managing a wide range of part numbers, substrates, and customer specifications means that coating systems must be configurable enough to handle significant variation while remaining reliable enough to deliver consistent results at production speed. The recipe management capabilities of an IntelliFinishing (IF) system sit at the center of that challenge.

Eddie Kohler knows this firsthand. In a recent conversation, he walked through how his facility uses its IF system to manage coating processes across a broad and varied workload, offering a practical look at how recipe libraries function in a real production environment.

A library built for variety

The scale of a recipe library can reflect the complexity of a coating operation. Kohler described a system that has grown substantially over time: "Our system currently has over 900 recipes in it. Some of those are repeated recipes that we use every time that certain part number comes through. Some of those are some custom recipes that we can play with a little bit as well."

That breadth points to one of the practical advantages of a well-configured IF system. Repeated recipes tied to specific part numbers reduce setup time and human error, while the availability of custom recipes gives operators room to adapt when a job calls for something outside the standard parameters. For a custom coater serving multiple customers across different industries, that combination of consistency and adaptability is essential.

Core recipes drive daily production

Having hundreds of recipes stored in a system does not mean all of them see regular use. Kohler was clear about the distinction between what is stored and what is active. "The number of recipes we currently have loaded probably is around, I would say, 80 to 100," he noted, adding that a smaller subset handles the bulk of the work: "There's probably 15 to 20 on there right now, but there's five core recipes that we use on a daily basis."

This layered structure, a large archive, a working set, and a daily core, is a practical model for managing complexity without overwhelming operators. It allows a facility to scale its capabilities over time, adding recipes for new customers or materials, while keeping day-to-day operations focused and efficient.

For custom coaters evaluating IF systems, Kohler's experience underscores the value of investing in platforms that can grow with the operation. The ability to store, organize, and quickly retrieve a large number of recipes, while maintaining a clear hierarchy of which ones drive production, separates systems that merely function from those that genuinely support the business.