Spectral and vision at the plant edge
Color, gloss, hiding power, fineness, seeds, foam and fill and label faults at plant rate; spectral curves, inline rheology, mill power, temperature and fill weight fused from the line's instruments.
Features
Everything a plant needs to trust software that acts.
Autonomy in a coatings plant is a set of features that make action safe: cited reasoning, graduated control, bounded writes, an immutable audit log, batch genealogy and a twin that rehearses the batch first. This page lists them one by one.
Illustrative scenario: Plant run · one architectural deep tint base from dosing to pallet · bead mill, let-down tank, tint station, filling line. Not a measured run.
Core
The features that make autonomy safe
Each of these exists because a coatings plant is color-critical, tolerance-bound, VOC-regulated and rate-constrained.
Prognostics with lead time
Fineness and color strength during the grind, viscosity during let-down, Delta-E before the colorant lands, contamination and off-spec risk, mill, dispenser and filler drift, predicted early enough to act.
Adaptive setpoints and additions
Closed loops on mill energy, let-down dosing, colorant additions and fill weight, inside documented limits, at the autonomy stage you set.
The path before the run
Coatwin ranks candidate dispersion, let-down and tint paths on Delta-E, fineness, viscosity, solvent, energy and takt, and discards any that leave the customer tolerance or the VOC limit.
Cited reasoning
Every recommendation carries a citation to the formula, color standard, quality spec or procedure it relied on, through tenant-isolated retrieval.
Audit log and genealogy
Every reading, recommendation, write, approval and release in an append-only log, assembled into the batch genealogy for release.
Craft capture
Per-plant yield-and-color history and per-formulator and per-color-matcher corrections, versioned and scoped per tenant, so the next batch starts from what the last one taught.
Fault to cause
Each inspection fault is attributed to the mill, the colorant, the filter cartridge, the filler or the upstream state that caused it, closing the loop across the line.
Yield, solvent, energy, takt
cuOpt sequences batches by color family and wash burden, places changeovers and allocates solvent and energy under permit and line constraints, and rebalances when the plant is disrupted.
Run timeline
One scenario run, step by step
Every Tinteon run is an ordered, inspectable sequence. This is run_scn_01, an illustrative scenario: Plant run · one architectural deep tint base from dosing to pallet · bead mill, let-down tank, tint station, filling line. Scenario complete · batch inside spec · one human approval at the tint station.
run_scn_01
scenario · not measured
SUCCEEDED
-
01
order.receive
SUCCEEDED
0.8 s
Plant Orchestrator · Pulled the formula, the customer color standard and its tolerance, the viscosity and solids spec, the raw-material lot records and the product's VOC limit from the coatings MES and the lab system; locked the target envelope for the run.
-
02
twin.simulate
SUCCEEDED
41 s
Plant Orchestrator · Simulated 24 candidate dispersion, let-down and tint paths on the Coatwin as-made twin; ranked them on predicted Delta-E, fineness margin, viscosity, solvent use, energy and takt, and discarded every candidate that moved outside the customer tolerance or the VOC limit.
-
03
disperse.mill
SUCCEEDED
1 h 48 m
Dose-and-Disperse · Held mill energy, media temperature and residence to the predicted fineness curve from mill power and spectral reflectance, trimming inside the formula window instead of grinding to a fixed time and checking the Hegman gauge afterward.
-
04
letdown.thin
SUCCEEDED
26 m
Letdown-and-Thin · Predicted viscosity from inline rheology, temperature and solids during let-down and converged on spec with two resin additions and one solvent addition instead of the standing four, inside the formula window; no stability risk was flagged.
-
05
tint.match
SUCCEEDED
14 m
Tint-and-Color · Read the batch's spectral curve against the customer standard, predicted the colorant additions and dosed the first pass; the draw-down read inside tolerance on Delta-E after one addition, with one retint still available under the declared limit.
-
06
inspect.spectral
SUCCEEDED
continuous
Defect-and-Inspect · 12 camera and spectral streams at the plant edge: color, gloss, hiding power, fineness and seed checks on the batch, fill-weight and label checks on every pail; two seeds were attributed to one filter cartridge and Filter-and-Fill scheduled the change.
-
07
approve.human
APPROVAL
2 m 10 s
Plant Orchestrator · The lowest-solvent candidate wanted a second colorant addition beyond the declared retint limit to tighten Delta-E further. Held for the shift color-matcher, who kept the customer tolerance untouched and approved one bounded addition with a tighter draw-down check.
-
08
filter.fill
SUCCEEDED
continuous
Filter-and-Fill · Filtered through the fresh cartridge and filled pails to exact weight using fill-weight and foam feedback from inspection; the filler corrected upstream instead of rejecting downstream.
-
09
handle.palletize
SUCCEEDED
continuous
Robot-and-Handling · Moved filled pails to the pallet inside the declared safety zone with a simulation-validated handling policy; one pallet-pattern change was executed after the zone check cleared.
-
10
release.genealogy
SUCCEEDED
58 s
Quality-and-Conformance · Batch released: raw-material lots, grind profile, let-down moves, colorant additions and spectral curves, inspection outcomes, VOC and solvent use and every human decision written to the batch genealogy and checked against spec.
Tool calls
The agent shows its work
Every tool invocation, argument and result is written to an immutable, human-readable log, and every reasoning step is expandable. Nothing about a run is hidden from the plant. The log below is the scenario run, not a measured one.
- 05:40:02mes.read_order({ batch: "B-4471", product: "TB-DEEP-07", standard: "STD-2210" })
- 05:40:02ok formula locked · tolerance Delta-E v4 · VOC limit on product
- 05:40:03lab.read_results({ lot: "PIG-8831", test: "incoming pigment" })
- 05:40:03ok lot inside spec · accepted for dosing
- 05:40:04twin.simulate({ candidates: 24, horizon: "batch" })
- 05:40:45ok best path #9 · tolerance held · lowest solvent and energy per batch
- 05:40:46policy.evaluate({ plan: 9, stage: "bounded" })
- 05:40:46ok 7 writes permitted · 1 write requires human approval
- 05:40:47plc.write_setpoint({ tag: "MILL2.ENERGY", basis: "power+spectral" })
- 07:28:30ok Hegman on target · color strength on target · no re-mill
- 07:29:00viscosity.predict({ tank: "LD-3", basis: "inline rheology+solids" })
- 07:29:00ok two resin and one solvent addition predicted · stability clear
- 07:29:01plc.write_setpoint({ tag: "LD3.SOLVENT_DOSE", window: "formula" })
- 07:55:10ok viscosity on spec · no overshoot
- 07:56:00spectro.read_curve({ station: "TINT-2", standard: "STD-2210" })
- 07:56:01dispenser.write({ colorant: "B", basis: "spectral prediction", retint_limit: 1 })
- 08:10:12ok draw-down inside Delta-E tolerance · one retint remaining
- 08:10:13vision.stream({ cameras: 12, models: ["color_gloss", "hiding_power", "seed_foam", "fill_label"] })
- 08:21:48flag: seed · pail 0417 · attributed to filter cartridge F-2 loading
- 08:21:49defect.attribute({ event: "seed", cause: "filter.cartridge_F2" })
- 08:21:49ok filter_fill notified · cartridge change scheduled · fill held 40 s
- 08:21:52approval.request({ action: "retint.beyond_limit", reason: "tighter Delta-E on lowest-solvent path" })
- 08:24:02ok approved by the shift color-matcher · tolerance untouched · one bounded addition
- 08:24:03plc.write_setpoint({ tag: "FIL1.TARGET_WEIGHT", basis: "fill-weight+foam feedback" })
- 09:48:40ok pails on weight · no spills · labels verified
- 09:49:38mes.release_batch({ batch: "B-4471", genealogy: "full" })
- 09:50:36ok batch released · scenario complete
Reasoning trace
Goal, plan, thought, action, observation, exactly as the orchestrator would record it.
GoalDisperse batch B-4471 to Hegman fineness, let it down to visco…
Disperse batch B-4471 to Hegman fineness, let it down to viscosity spec, tint it inside Delta-E of standard STD-2210, filter and fill it to exact weight and release it with full genealogy.
PlanSimulate the whole batch on the twin first. Lead with fineness…
Simulate the whole batch on the twin first. Lead with fineness so the let-down gets the right mill base and the tint station gets the right color strength. Keep the customer tolerance and the VOC limit as hard constraints. Let the dispenser converge only inside the declared retint limit; hold anything beyond it for a human.
ThoughtThe standing practice grinds to a fixed time, lets down by fou…
The standing practice grinds to a fixed time, lets down by four additions and tints by draw-down loops. With live fineness and viscosity prediction and a spectral color-match model the batch can land on the first pass. The saving is rework, colorant and solvent, not tolerance: the customer standard is never a candidate for optimization.
Actiontwin.simulate(candidates=24) → path #9: Hegman on target in on…
twin.simulate(candidates=24) → path #9: Hegman on target in one grind, three let-down additions, one colorant pass, lowest predicted solvent and energy per batch, takt met.
ObservationPath #9 wants a second colorant addition beyond the declared r…
Path #9 wants a second colorant addition beyond the declared retint limit to tighten Delta-E further. The policy engine routes that single move to the shift color-matcher and permits the other seven writes.
ActionExecute path #9 at the bounded stage: mill energy, let-down do…
Execute path #9 at the bounded stage: mill energy, let-down dosing and the first colorant pass proceed; inspection runs continuously; the extra addition waits.
ObservationApproval granted at 08:24:02 with the tolerance untouched and …
Approval granted at 08:24:02 with the tolerance untouched and a tighter draw-down check. Two seeds were attributed to filter cartridge F-2 and Filter-and-Fill scheduled the change with a 40 second hold.
OutcomeScenario complete. The batch is released with raw-material lot…
Scenario complete. The batch is released with raw-material lots, grind profile, let-down moves, colorant additions, spectral curves, inspection outcomes, VOC and solvent use and the human decision in the genealogy. No measured plant result is claimed; this is the run the platform is designed to execute.
In depth
Three features worth the detail
Latency
Decisions at the line, not in the cloud
A hold decision is only useful if it arrives before the pail leaves the filler, and a color prediction is only useful if it arrives before the colorant is dosed. The design targets are 50 to 150 ms per frame for inspection, under 250 ms for holds and under a second for recommendations, on plant-edge GPUs, with the cloud used for training and simulation.
| Decision | Design target |
|---|---|
| Per-frame inspection decision | 50–150 ms |
| Filling and inspection hold | <250 ms |
| Operator recommendation | <1 s |
| Streams per line | 8–24 |
Evidence
Nothing is recommended without a citation
The orchestrator retrieves over formulas, color standards, coatings and quality specs (ISO 9001, VOC and REACH, customer color standards) and quality and genealogy procedures. Retrieval is multi-tenant isolated and permission-aware, and every output is traceable to a source.
- Citation and grounding checks on every output
- Schema and safety guardrails
- Golden datasets and model-as-judge evaluation in CI
- Immutable, assurance-grade quality and VOC audit log for every action
Rehearsal
The twin discards what the plant should never try
Coatwin simulates the batch as it will actually be made, across dispersion energy, colorant response, rheology and line flow. Candidates that save solvent or time but leave the customer tolerance or touch the VOC limit never reach the agents.
- Multi-objective ranking: Delta-E, fineness, viscosity, solvent, energy, takt
- Safe control envelopes handed to the agents
- Twin-versus-actual calibration every batch
- Validated synthetic rare faults for training
Multi-agent handoff
Agents negotiate, they do not collide
Two agents will want the same actuator. The orchestrator arbitrates on the run goal, with the customer color standard, the VOC limit and a clean fill above everything, and the handoff is logged like any other step.
Contested move: filter cartridge change on the filling line
-
01yield_takt.request(skip change) SUCCEEDED0.2 s
Yield-and-Takt wants to defer the filter cartridge change to the shift break so the filling line stays on takt and the next color family starts on time.
-
02filter_fill.request(change now) SUCCEEDED0.2 s
Filter-and-Fill requires the change now because inspection attributed two seeds to the loaded cartridge. Contamination in a released pail is a customer complaint.
-
03orchestrator.arbitrate SUCCEEDED0.4 s
Product conformance outranks takt under every run goal. The cartridge change wins the actuator; the request to defer is logged with its score and the reason it lost.
-
04yield_takt.handoff(resequenced) SUCCEEDED80 s
Yield-and-Takt recovers the schedule by pulling the next batch's wash earlier and moving a lighter color family ahead. Takt is met without filling through a loaded cartridge.
Arbitration rules
- Run goal first. Every request is scored against the declared goal, not against the requesting agent's local objective.
- Conformance outranks everything. The customer color standard, the VOC limit and a clean fill are never optimization variables. A contaminated or off-color pail is a complaint; a takt miss is a schedule.
- Time-boxed ownership. An agent holds a contested actuator for a bounded window, then must re-justify.
- Everything is logged. The losing request, the score and the reason all appear in the run record.
- Deadlocks escalate to a human rather than resolving by timeout.
Autonomy
Four stages, set per loop
A plant does not go from manual to bounded control in one step. Tinteon makes the stage explicit per loop, auditable and reversible at any time, and some decisions never leave the person.
| Stage | What the agent does | What the person does | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shadow | Predicts fineness, viscosity, Delta-E, hiding power, contamination and fill faults; writes nothing | Runs the plant as today; compares predictions to the lab, the spectrophotometer and PLC outcomes | First phase with every design partner |
| Assist | Recommends bounded mill, let-down, colorant, filtration and fill moves with the evidence | A formulator, color-matcher or quality manager approves or rejects each one | After accuracy is proven against the baseline |
| Bounded | Writes low-risk dispersion, tinting and inspection setpoints inside documented formula, tolerance, VOC, equipment and rollback limits | Approves anything above the limits; reviews the shift record | After the quality and ROI gates agreed up front |
| Exceptions | Escalates anything outside its envelope, any move against a customer standard or VOC limit, and release decisions | Always decides these; the agent never does | Permanent |
How it works
A goal becomes a plan becomes a run
Nothing about a Tinteon run is implicit. The goal is declared, the plan is rehearsed on the twin, each step is typed, and the outcome is written to the batch genealogy.
The orchestrator plans, the agents act
A run starts as a goal, becomes a plan, and executes as a graph of typed steps. The active path is always visible, always logged, always reversible.
RUNNING APPROVAL SUCCEEDED
Autonomy is a dial, not a switch
Shadow, assist, bounded, exceptions. Each plant sets the stage per loop, and anything above the threshold, every move against a customer standard or a VOC limit and every release decision waits for a named person.
Design targets
Feature design targets
The numbers Tinteon is engineered against, from the GPU utilization plan.
50–150 ms
per-frame edge decision on color, hiding power, contamination and fill models
<250 ms
hold decision for filling and inspection actions
<1 s
recommendation latency for formulators and color-matchers
8–24
camera and sensor streams per dispersion, tinting or filling line
2,000–5,000
GPU-hours of initial training per major model family
10k–100k
simulated batch and fault scenarios per design partner
Design targets from the GPU utilization plan, all marked aspirational in the architecture. Nothing on this page is a measured plant result; measurements start when the first design-partner line runs in shadow mode.
Developers
Every action is a record
There is no SDK to download yet. What design partners get is the integration surface: connectors, an autonomy policy declared per loop, and an audit record for every reading, recommendation, write and approval. This is the shape of one record, illustrative.
What the surface gives you
- Connectors to mill and disperser PLCs, tint dispensers, spectrophotometers, inline rheometers, filling lines, lab systems, MES, cameras and meters, with declared allow-lists and limits
- An autonomy policy per loop: stage, tags, rate, magnitude and retint limits, named approvers
- Citations on every recommendation to the formula, color standard, spec or procedure it relied on
- Model versions named in every record, with rollback by version
- Export of the audit log and batch genealogy to your quality system
// one write, as the audit log would hold it
{
"run": "run_scn_01",
"step": "tint.match",
"agent": "agent.tint_color",
"stage": "bounded",
"action": { "tool": "dispenser.write", "tag": "TINT2.COLORANT_B" },
"limits": { "max_addition": "declared per colorant", "retints": "1 remaining" },
"evidence": ["spectro.read_curve", "colorant.predict_dose"],
"citation": "std:STD-2210 tolerance v4 §2",
"policy": "permitted",
"models": { "color_match": "versioned", "policy": "versioned" },
"human": null,
"outcome": "inside Delta-E tolerance · one retint remaining"
}
From the plant floor
Who this is built for
The three people in a coatings plant whose week changes when the process runs itself, and what each of them needs from Tinteon.
Plant or Operations Director
Owns production rate, quality, rework and yield, waste, solvent and energy, and compliance. Wants a plant that holds color and spec at higher rate with fewer interventions, and a number that justifies the spend.
Formulation or Process Engineer and Color-Matcher
Owns formulas, dispersion, tint and color-match process windows and yield. Approves and corrects the agents in assist mode; those corrections train the models.
Quality or Compliance Manager
Owns product quality under ISO 9001 and customer color standards, color and contamination conformance, VOC and REACH compliance, and batch genealogy. Needs every action grounded, cited and written to an immutable record.
IT/OT and EHS leads approve the deployment. There are no customer quotes on this site yet; design partners will speak for themselves when they choose to.
Integrations
It speaks plant, not cloud
Tinteon reads and writes through the systems already on the floor. No parallel historian, no new HMI, no rip-and-replace. Connectors are built against each design partner's stack first; long-tail integrations are out of scope for the first release.
PLC and controls of dispersers, bead, basket and horizontal mills, with mill power, media temperature and residence telemetry
Setpoint reads, guarded writes, interlocks untouched
Tint dispensers and colorant dosing systems
Colorant additions inside declared retint and additive limits
Spectrophotometers, draw-down cameras and color-standard libraries
Spectral curves and Delta-E in; cited matches out
Inline rheometers and viscometers, temperature and solids sensors, LIMS results
Continuous viscosity and stability state
Filtration skids, filling lines, fill-weight scales, labelers
Telemetry in; fill-weight and hold commands inside approved windows
Multi-camera and spectral stations for color, gloss, hiding power, seeds, foam, fill and label faults
Frames, fault events, hold recommendations
Orders, formulas, color standards, product specs, batch genealogy
Targets in, release records out
Plant and asset meters, solvent and VOC accounting; Isaac-driven drum, pail and tote cells
Hard constraints for scheduling; bounded handling
Guardrails
An agent that can move a setpoint needs a leash
Tinteon writes to production equipment in a chemical plant. Every capability is scoped, every write is policy-checked, every output is cited, and every action is written to an append-only audit log the plant owns.
- Bounded action space. Each agent can only write to an explicit tag allow-list, inside per-tag rate, magnitude and retint limits, at the autonomy stage the plant has set.
- Standards and limits are read, never written. The customer color standard and its tolerance, the VOC and solvent limits under the plant's permit and the batch release decision stay with the quality system and the people who own it.
- Policy engine before every write. Autonomy stage, interlock state, product, formula, shift and operator presence are evaluated before a setpoint or a colorant addition moves.
- Grounded and cited. Every recommendation carries a citation to the formula, color standard, spec or procedure it relied on. Retrieval is tenant-isolated and permission-aware.
- Immutable audit log. Append-only, exportable and retained on the plant's own storage, aligned to ISO 9001, VOC and REACH and customer color-standard record-keeping.
- Hard fallback. If the edge node, the network or a model stops, the plant keeps running on its existing mill, dispenser and filling-line control and interlocks.
- Tenant and IP isolation. Formulas, color standards, raw-material data and tolerance models never cross a customer boundary. On-prem deployment available.
Assurance posture
| Item | Scope | Status |
|---|---|---|
| SOC 2 Type I | Cloud control plane | QUEUED Roadmap, first 6 months |
| SOC 2 Type II | Cloud control plane | QUEUED Roadmap, 6 to 12 months |
| ISO 9001 · VOC and REACH · customer color standards | Grounding and record-keeping | RUNNING Design basis for retrieval and the audit log |
| Per-tenant isolation | Data, memory, models | RUNNING Design rule |
| On-prem deployment | Formula-sensitive producers | RUNNING Design option |
Tinteon supports your quality and VOC records. It is not a certification and it does not replace your quality system or your permit.
Enterprise
Standardize autonomy across the group
One policy model, one audit trail and one set of yield, rework, waste, solvent, energy and color benchmarks across every plant in the group, with each site's formulas, color standards and tolerance models kept private to that site.
- Multi-site plant-edge fleet with shared model governance
- Custom formula, color and tolerance models per site
- SSO and role-based access, named approvers (roadmap, 6 to 12 months)
- Model versioning, validation reports and rollback
- On-prem or private-cloud deployment
- SLAs and outcome-based components on the highest-value workflows
FAQ
Straight answers
The questions plant directors, formulators, color-matchers and quality managers ask in the first meeting.
Only at the autonomy stage your plant has set, and only to an explicit allow-list of low-risk loops inside documented limits. Every design partner starts in shadow mode, where Tinteon predicts and writes nothing. Assist mode follows, where a formulator or color-matcher approves each recommendation. Bounded autonomy on dispersion, tinting and inspection loops comes after the quality and ROI gates agreed up front.
They are not optimization variables. The customer standard and its tolerance, the VOC and solvent limits under your permit and the batch release decision stay with your quality procedures and your people. Tinteon reads them, cites them and writes every reading to an immutable audit log attached to the batch genealogy. It is grounded in ISO 9001, VOC and REACH and customer color standards; it is not a certification and does not replace your quality system.
Tinteon sits above your existing automation as a supervisory layer. If it stops, the plant keeps running on its current mill, dispenser and filling-line control and the interlocks it already has. A Tinteon outage degrades the plant to the way it runs today, not to a stop.
The first phase is shadow mode on one line: Tinteon reads your spectrophotometer, mill and dispenser history, inline rheology, lab results and MES while you run the plant as usual, and we measure its predictions against your lab, your draw-downs and PLC outcomes. Recommendations start when accuracy is proven against that baseline, and improve as plant-specific history and color-matcher corrections accumulate.
Formulas, color standards, tolerance models and raw-material data are tenant-scoped and never used to train another customer's models. Retrieval is multi-tenant isolated and permission-aware. Cross-plant learning, where a customer opts in, is federated and IP-isolated. On-prem deployment is available for producers protecting sensitive formulas.
You are, the same as with any control strategy. That is why every write is policy-checked, bounded, logged and reversible, every output carries a citation to the formula, standard or procedure it relied on, and anything above your threshold waits for a named approver. The audit log records the request, the reasoning, the limits applied and the human decision.
As a design partner, on one line, with one hard metric: Delta-E first-time-right rate and retints, re-mills and mill energy, solvent per batch and viscosity variance, or contamination and fill rejects. We instrument the line in shadow mode, measure the baseline, move to assist mode when accuracy is proven, and expand only when the number holds.
Full multi-module autonomy across the whole plant, long-tail integrations beyond the design partners' stacks, and self-serve onboarding. The first release is one wedge workflow, its connectors, the agent loop with human checkpoints, the review console and the assurance-grade quality and VOC audit log.
Get started
See these features on your line
Shadow mode shows the perception, prediction and evidence features before any control feature is enabled.