The creation of material libraries using color and appearance measurement equipment such as the X-Rite TAC7, has accelerated the product design process and become the norm for automotive.  However communicating material specification to suppliers has still required physical panels for both creation and quality control of parts, furthermore when visual variation is observed in production, this has resulted in wasted time for approval and added costs for shipping.

By expanding the capabilities of portable devices like the X-Rite MA-T12 with SVBRDF (Spatially Varying Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function), this enables remote locations to communicate accurately variance in both color and appearance, and thus reducing the need to ship parts or panels for visual approval.