Magna Donnelly Case Study

As the world's leading producer of automotive mirrors, Magna Donnelly understands the importance of delivering the highest quality and value to major automakers worldwide. Their customers count on Magna Donnelly to be flexible enough in their manufacturing process to produce hundreds of different mirror designs flawlessly. The same can be said about their color. Every mirror color must be a perfect match to the vehicle. To verify color with precision, Magna Donnelly relies on X-Rite's VeriColor system. The VeriColor system is the first industrial-grade color sensor to affordably bring a very high level of color resolution to the production floor. The VeriColor system accurately detects the most subtle color differences, regardless of ambient light conditions and manufacturing environment. It protects against the metameric "mismatches" that fool traditional sensors and result in mistaken color identity. For Magna Donnelly, production downtime is an unacceptable option to meet customer deadlines for finished product. With over 25,000 mirrors produced daily (one every second), just minutes of downtime due to inaccurate color verification can cost the company precious time and money. According to Steve Gidaro, Equipment Engineer for Magna Donnelly's Alto, Michigan Plant, most production downtime was attributed to color verification. "Before VeriColor, we used a complex camera-based color verification system on our production lines,"said Gidaro. "It was not designed for the industrial environment and had trouble telling the difference between subtle color shifts. This forced us to shut down production lines when an inaccuracy was discovered during final quality assurance."