SELKIRK, N.Y. – GretagMacbeth and GE ColorXpress Services today announced the joint launch of three new corporate color management (CCM) programs — CCM Silver, CCM Gold and CCM Platinum. Developed to support companies using color to drive their brand-marketing strategies, these programs are designed to help customers reduce costs and time-to-market issues by collaborating with industry experts to manage and improve color communications throughout the supply chain. Both companies will employ their complementary expertise to deliver out-sourced color management services that provide quick and effective assistance in tackling business-critical color management needs that many companies lack the dedicated resources to address. By streamlining the color approval process, these programs can enable OEMs, specifiers, and their supply chain(s) to operate more efficiently and confidently, while focusing on their core competencies. The three CCM programs cover a wide range of needs, from a customer who is just starting to employ colors but recognizes the need to manage color, to a customer who incorporates a variety of color but needs full color management support. The programs offer the following key elements: standards development; standards ordering and distribution via customized web page; pre-production and production part auditing; color consulting, training and education; controlled lighting and measurement devices; Root Cause and Corrective Action (RCCA) consulting, a GE Six Sigma program; and monthly reporting and communication to the supply chain. Each program is designed at a level to meet customers’ general needs, while also allowing for customized à la carte options. Unique to the program is the ability to order color standards on-line via a secure Web site on a global, 24/7 basis to help the customer decrease time to market and stay tightly focused on their core business. Quality audits will be conducted to help ensure that standards and materials provided by the supply chain are consistent, thus speeding up the color approval cycle throughout the supply chain. “Effective color management is critical to helping OEMs quickly bring order and speed to a chaotic global manufacturing environment where suppliers all over the world are producing components for one final product,” said Greg Quinn, manager of GE ColorXpress Services, the industry’s fastest provider of plastic color standards and color matching. “OEMs and specifiers that subscribe to these outsourced color management programs can use them to improve quality and get the ‘hottest’ new colors to market faster than ever before, while reducing overall color management costs,” said Greg Shrider, vice president of sales for GretagMacbeth, the world’s leader in color measurement and management systems. GE ColorXpress Services and GretagMacbeth will provide these color management solutions for plastics, paints and inks to OEMs in industries and markets ranging from consumer electronics and business equipment to automotive. GretagMacbeth provides a comprehensive, integrated single-source solution for selecting, matching, measuring, formulating, managing, evaluating and communicating color in industries ranging from paints, plastics, textiles, inks and packaging, to digital imaging, graphic arts, desktop publishing and printing. The company’s full line of color control and management tools includes spectrophotometers, densitometers, color quality control and color formulating software, profiling software, standardized lighting, color standards, white reflectance coating, training, calibration, and certification services. GretagMacbeth, headquartered in Regensdorf, Switzerland, maintains offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, France, Hong Kong SAR, Thailand and the Philippines. GretagMacbeth trains and support customers worldwide and is an ISO-9001 certified company. For additional information in the United States and Canada, call 845-565-7660 or visit the GretagMacbeth Web site at www.gretagmacbeth.com. GE ColorXpress Services offers online plastic color services including ColorXpress Select, Micro-Lot matching, and custom color matching at its Web site www.gecolorxpress.com. ColorXpress Select provides customers with plastic color standards from a large color library within 48 hours of order. ColorXpress generates and delivers small amounts of material for prototype design through Micro-Lot matching. With color matching, ColorXpress matches a customer’s color sample with up to 50 pounds of material.