Lancaster, Pa.— Armstrong World Industries has ceased production of its residential stencil manufacturing process, used for decades, at its flooring plant here. Declining volumes and a shift toward new products utilizing next-generation design capabilities are drivers of this decision, noted Frank Ready, Armstrong’s senior vice president of sales and marketing. Earlier this year, Armstrong introduced 48 vinyl sheet products using its next-generation Inlaid Color Graphics manufacturing process and new MasterWorks Technology.

Additionally, 46 products that require these new technologies will be released in the first quarter of 2004. Among these will be the reintroduction of Armstrong’s signature product, Designer Solarian using the new technologies to create the new and improved structure. “Being the industry’s styling and design leader requires we continue to invest in new decorating capabilities,” said Ready. “Floors produced using these and other new technologies exceed the demands of consumers.” “There is a lot of equity in the Designer Solarian brand,” said Allen Cubell, vice president of resilient products.

“We’re using this equity by saying this new category which we are calling Inlaid Color Graphics, warrants and merits being labeled under the Designer Solarian name. “The response from distributors has been extremely positive for a couple reasons,” he explained. “First, that we’re bringing back the Solarian brand, and second, that we’re coming back with a category of products—high-performance, new technology products—which still enable them to go after that high-end marketplace. They’re very excited about it.

“The other technology we’ve invested heavily in recently is the MasterWorks Technology, which is a high-definition, rotogravure printing. So we’ve got a combination of two new technologies, Inlaid Color Graphics, which combines print and stencil, and MasterWorks, which is high-definition, rotogravure print which really replaced the more traditional inlaid color technology. With MasterWorks, we get better fidelity, better texturing, more realism and better performance. “For us, it’s a huge innovation breakthrough both in aesthetics and in performance,” he continued. Products that utilize Masterworks are produced at the Lancaster and Stillwater facilities.

“They represent the next generation of flooring design and manufacturing technology that dramatically improves the clarity and fidelity with which flooring imagery is produced,” said Ready. “Clarity of reproduction means customers are seeing the floor exactly as visualized by the styling artist.” Highland Park, the first collection to incorporate MasterWorks, combines photographic imaging with the dimension and embossed texture of the precision, high-resolution rotogravure manufacturing process. Six styles in 25 colors make up the Highland Park collection.

A new commercial tile collection introduced last month also uses MasterWorks. Arteffects, a signature, non-directional tile, is produced at the Lancaster plant. Products using the Inlaid Color Graphics process are made at Armstrong’s plant in Holmsund, Sweden. A new process that merges the mill’s exclusive Inlaid Color process with rotogravure-printing technology, Inlaid Color Graphics takes vinyl flooring to a new level, noted Ready. Among the first products to use Inlaid Color Graphics is the Patina Collection.

Introduced in May to selected retailers, the collection “boasts three interpretive styles in 14 distinctive colors that reflect the latest interior trends,” he said. Cubell explained, there are currently no plans to bring the next-generation Inlaid Color Graphics process to the Lancaster plant. “We’ve got a neat, little facility in Sweden, which has made commercial flooring products, heterogenous multi-layered products. “What we decided to do was,” he explained, “invest in that technology at that facility and create the new Inlaid Color Graphics, which is a combination of print and inregister inlaid colors.

The result is, an incredibly durable, high-performance, high style line of floors.” Ready noted that inventory levels of the most popular stencil products, including Jaspe and Stencil Craft, will be available to fill demand through the first quarter of 2004. Armstrong anticipates that fewer than 50 employees will be impacted at the Lancaster floor plant. —Louis Iannaco