MAKING AND FINDING SOLUTIONS
regulatory approval process do you have, and how does it affect your requirements?
Dirkx: From the way that you ask this question, you clearly understand some of the reasons why our industry doesn’t like to change. On top of being heavily regulated, the supply chain is long, and a change requires requalification down the whole line. Imagine that I have a new low-permeability polymer to offer as a fuel line material. We have to convince the tubing manufacturer, who likely has to convince a component manufacturer, who has to convince an OEM [origi- nal equipment manufacturer] like Ford or GM. If they are convinced, specific qualification testing has to be done that takes time and money. Terefore, the new offer must be compelling enough, either from a cost/performance point of view or a regulatory point of view, to drive this change. For this reason, new regulations are often what drives change and, therefore, opportunity. For product and process development projects, we use a gated process that ensures that our
health, environment and safety people are engaged early in the process.
Army AL&T: In the military, you often hear about the first-, second-, third- and fourth-order effects of things, whether it’s training or the logistic supply chain or something else, as you described. Can you talk about the kinds of obstacles you face when you try to push something into a different space?
Dirkx: I’ve been in this new product development business
for a number of
years now, so I consider myself a student. I still have a lot to learn, but I’ve learned a lot over the years, too. So I tried, first, to paint the picture of why industry, particu- larly the chemical industry, is so resistant to change. And remember, chemicals are part of everything, so it doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about your Teflon pan or your automobile.
If you think of a polymer as a kind of a plate of spaghetti, it’s all these long chains of molecules represented by the noodles of spaghetti. The property of that material will be based on the chemistry of these long spaghetti noodles, how long they are and how they’re held together, the bonding in between.
At the basis of that is somebody making chemistry in a kettle to get to the parts that are assembled into your automobile. And so if you’re working at the molecular level making your chemistry and you’re trying to convince somebody that you’ve got a change that’s going to bring value through that product change, it better be damned compelling.
If I take automotive as an example, what are the big things driving them? Well, these days they worry about weight a lot, so things that can help take weight out of the automobile are very interesting. It helps efficiency. It helps them move to electrification. It’s something that will capture their attention. And, of course, the old classic: costs. Tey will be inter- ested in anything you can do to drive costs down. But if I take those two exam- ples, I may have something in my labs that is consistent with that, which gives me a good head start, but my customer
86
is way upstream. He’s not the guy mak- ing the automobile, he’s probably making a part that somebody else is selling to somebody that’s putting that as part of an assembly that goes to the automotive guy, who’s clicking together a bunch of assemblies.
You’ve got to be able to communicate that value all the way down that supply chain. And if it doesn’t bring value to somebody in that supply chain, they’re a poten- tial block. And it’s got to be compelling enough. If it’s a minor cost reduction, it may not be interesting enough because they’ve got to do all that requalification, potentially. If it’s a critical component, there’s a lot of requalification, and it costs real money to do that.
You can imagine why all this would make it very challenging to implement a change. You have to find something that’s compelling enough, which means it creates enough value that you’ve got a partner through the chain to make that change.
Army AL&T: So, if, for example, you’re approaching an automotive company, you would feel that whatever this new thing might be has to be a home run rather than just a single or a double.
Dirkx: Tis is where I wanted to come back to. When you talk about require- ments, my closest analogy in my world would be regulation. Tis is where regu- lation can really drive change, and why it’s important that we keep our ear to the ground, anticipating regulatory changes. Maybe somebody demands that a cer- tain percentage of an automobile has to be manufactured from reusable parts or be bio-based; or they have a certain mile-per-gallon limit they have to hit; or, more specifically, new emission require- ments. One example is the move to
Army AL&T Magazine
July-September 2015
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