Researcher Elwin Alberda of Polytex on Chemeter:
“I hardly used the excellent support!”
Researcher Elwin Alberda of Polytex on Chemeter: ‘I hardly used the excellent support!’ – Polytex Enviromental Inks is a global leader in innovative research and development of specialty waterborne and UV/EB inks, coatings and digital primers for a wide range of products. Polytex supplies manufacturers of wall coverings (wallpaper), window fashions, flooring and floor coverings, personal care products – think diapers – and a variety of printed materials.
For the production of the legally required safety data sheets, Polytex works with Chemeter from Siam. In conversation with the MSDS responsible Research & Development employee Elwin Alberda.
A challenge
‘I followed the laboratory courses in Boxmeer and Oss and after graduating in 2014 I started here at Polytex at R&D as a researcher for the inks we make. I research the possibilities of the inks in response to questions from customers. Great to do, I think. Especially when things get difficult and I have to step up and push things beyond the limits to get to the desired result.’
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How we ended up at Chemeter
Over a year and a half ago the director asked me if I would like to take on the production of the MSDS sheets. I thought that would be a great new challenge and I like variety in my daily work. The program I came to work with was disappointing. It was very user unfriendly, with many pop-up screens. The raw materials and finished products were listed indiscriminately. That was not pleasant, but I did not want to start whining right away. So I carried on working with it until I understood that I also had to teach other people how to work with the program. Then I indicated that I found the program much too cumbersome and complicated and that I would like to look for something else. My boss thought it was OK and, through him, we ended up with Chemeter from Siam.
Excellent support
‘After Paul’s demo, we were all excited. My boss said, “if this works so much easier than the old program, then we’ll just do this and purchase an unlimited number of users with it.” Thus happened and then the installation went quite smoothly. Except that our server balked. So now I have Chemeter locally on my computer until we have a new server installed. I also experience the support from Paul here in the Netherlands and from the department in Spain as excellent. If I ask “Spain” support questions, I get an answer within 24 hours. Incidentally, I hardly ever use that and find out most of it myself. In my opinion, the best way to get to know software is to figure it out yourself. Not if it is completely “chewed out”. That’s no problem at all with this software since most of it is self-explanatory.
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Inks for floors and floor coverings
Inks for personal care
Inks for wallpaper
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Meets expectations
‘I can’t say anything else but that Chemeter fully meets the expectations that were raised during the demo. It has a super user-friendly interface and it is clearly organized into the different categories of raw materials, intermediates and final products. I currently have 100 final products in Chemeter, 450 raw materials and some intermediates. This afternoon I’m going to train the first colleague. The intention is that in the future the other researchers will put their own recipes in there and that I will keep the overview. So today is the first one and I expect him to be able to print out his first safety data sheets by the end of the day. That would have been different with the old program, I’m afraid. One of Chemeter’s major advantages is that it calculates the hazardous goods itself. With the old program you had to calculate and enter that manually.’