The do-it-yourselfer plucked a gallon can of base paint from the shelf of the local hardware store and handed it to keith, the cheerful clerk at the paint counter. their eyes met briefly and the do-it-yourselfer silently handed over sample 150c-1, musical mist, to the clerk. it was impractical to keep several gallons of every possible color on the shelves at the hardware store, so the paint manufacturer had created clever workaround. the workaround was a computer-based system that added predetermined quantities of pigments to a gallon can of base paint depending on the desired shade, in this case, musical mist. the hardware store now needed to stock only the base paint, this machine, and a small supply of paint pigments in order to create the thousands of colors in its catalog. this scenario is a prime example of