Sherwin Williams is leading the charge when it comes to technological advancements in the automotive paint market. We spoke with global marketing director, Bryan Darga, about how they are changing the game with its new products for the coming year.

The Formula Express 2.0 spectrometer.

Darga told us new products were developed with the intention of making things quicker and easier. He said Sherwin Williams’ goal is “to provide products, services, programs and systems to help customers do things faster — whether delivering vehicles faster, getting vehicles through the paint booth faster, or anything else to keep them in the ‘fast lane.'”

Darga also stated the company’s focus over the past few years has been to drive productivity for customers. Its new products on display at this year’s SEMA Show are a direct result of this premise. The HP Process refinish system allows painters to have one to three panel jobs finished in about 45 minutes, thanks to its Air-Bake technology. Dara said primers, paints, and clear coats will require only 15 minutes to dry with no baking to cure, thus improving the turnover rate of repair projects.

A new Sherwin Williams’ color retrieval system, Formula Express 2.0, is designed to make the color selection process as fast and easy as possible. The system uses a spectrometer to photograph cars and compare the color to all known color formulas in the system’s database. It then selects the closest match to that color, eliminating guesswork or trial-and-error in the selection process.