SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION

LECTURE 17

RADICAL TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION IN INDUSTRY (CONTINUED)

ILLUSTRATION: DUPONT’S INNOVATION OF NYLON

FREDERICK BETZPORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY

Carothers's illness and the staff needs of nylon development gave Bolton additional opportunity to bring Stine's fundamental research division back into the fold of standard industrial research. Soon it was "reported, reviewed, supervised, and administered in much the same manner as other lines of work."

Stine's now virtually defunct program had 'succeeded" in producing neoprene and nylon -- because the company had hired Carothers and Stine had encouraged him to work on polymers.

But then Bolton had arrived at the proper moment to reorient the work toward an important technical objective.

Had Carothers been left entirely on his own, as Stine had envisioned, nylon would probably not have been discovered and developed.

Clearly tension existed between the pure-science idealist Carothers and the pragmatic Bolton, but nylon emerged from this tension.

Neoprene and nylon were first-rate achievements because the new substances were the first ones to have properties that excelled their natural analogues to any significant extent.

Neoprene resisted degradation by oxygen, oil, and gasoline, and nylon was stronger and more abrasion-resistant than silk. The Du Pont Chemical Department's management believed neoprene and nylon had the potential to become outstanding products.

However, the tasks of development and commercialization were formidable. From the preparation of the intermediate chemicals to the processing of the polymer into useful products, Du Pont had very few technological precedents to follow.

SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY Discovery Bottleneck Theory Invention

ENGINEERING COMMERCIALIZATION Systems Standards Design Processes

TYPES OF RESEARCH INQUIRIES

At the heart of both production processes would be the reaction of the intermediates to form the solid polymers.

In the mid-1930s there were no commercially produced synthetics that required the extent of control over the polymerization reaction that neoprene and nylon demanded. Therefore, Du Pont had to develop most of this technology itself, drawing upon all its deep and broad technological skills to achieve success.

At the same time that Du Pont's researchers were developing processes to make these new products, others were investigating strategies for commercializing them.

Both neoprene and nylon had to fit into existing fabrication networks. The former was sold unprocessed to rubber fabricators, and the latter in the form of filaments to textile companies.

Du Pont had to do the spinning step with nylon because the silk throwers were incapable of adapting to the new technology. Both neoprene and nylon were exceptional discoveries, and their development and commercialization were equally exceptional.

A crash program brought nylon out of the laboratory and into the marketplace in less than five years. There are two principal reasons why it was developed so effectively.

One was the early decision that full-fashioned silk hosiery would be the first large market for the new material. Du Pont's management exercised considerable restraint by not yielding to the enthusiasm of researchers who saw nylon replacing, among other things, cellophane, photographic film, leather, and wool.

Each year about seventy million dollars' worth of silk went into stockings, which were knitted into eight pairs per American woman per year. By focusing directly on this one market, Du Pont avoided having conflicting demands made on the research personnel:

(1) who were trying to develop a production process and

(2) on the sales development people who were working with textile manufacturers to evaluate nylon's performance.

INNOVATION PROCESSTRANSFORMING KNOWLEDGE TO VALUE

NATIONAL KNOWLEDGE INFRASTRUCURE

UNIVERSITYRESEARCH

INDUSTRIALRESEARCH &

DEVELOPMENT

GOVERNMENTRESEARCH

INDUSTRIALVALUE-ADDING

STRUCTURES

BUSINESS

PRODUCT CUSTOMER

APPLICATIONSYSTEM

TASK

MARKET

TRANSFORMING RESEARCH TO UTILITY

PRODUCTION ADMINISTRATION MARKETING FINANCEENGINEERING INFORMATION

RESEARCH

NATURE

LESSONS FOR SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION

In technological innovation the leap from the idea of technical feasibility to the idea of a product for a market application is the entrepreneurial creativity for commercial success.

The product for a market application sets the technical specifications that the new technology must meet to be used in the product – engineering specifications.

The engineering specifications provide the goals (research issues) for the commercialization research.

The second way Du Pont kept the development of nylon moving was by focusing on one process for each production step. The research managers constantly put all their eggs in one basket.

Of course, this strategy can lead to disaster if a particular approach proves unworkable. Fortunately for Du Pont, its managers exercised skillful judgment and had enough perseverance that no major lines of work had to be abandoned. Expediency ruled. Some of the initial equipment, according to Crawford H. Greenewalt (who oversaw much of the work) accomplished its tasks through "brute force and awkwardness”. Still, the processes worked and produced nylon at a cost less than that of silk.

This get-a-workable-process approach to development depended heavily on Du Pont's impregnable patent position. Because nylon was unquestionably a Du Pont invention, the company did not have to worry about being undercut by competitors. To make money it was not necessary to have the best possible process but just to have one that worked. As long as nylon could be made at a reasonable cost, improvements could wait.

LESSONS FOR SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION

Intellectual property in the form of a patent can be very valuable in the early times of a new technology, allowing for an early market and profit margins before competition can enter with look-alike products.

In the summer of 1934 the fiber project became the major focus of activityin Carothers's group. Several of his assistants began preparing polyamides from virtually every combination of di-basic acid and diamine with between two- and ten-carbon-atom chains. Of the eighty-one possible compounds, only five looked promising.

Eventually 6-6 (the numerical designation comes from the number of carbon atoms in the diamine and the dibasic acid, respectively), first prepared by Gerard J. Berchet on February 28,1935, became Du Pont's nylon.

The early assessments of nylon showed that major problems would have to be solved.

Only one of the two intermediate compounds, adipic acid, was produced on a fairly large scale, and that was in Germany. The other one, hexamethylenediamine, was a laboratory curiosity. Also, methods of controlling the polymer chain growth had to be developed, and once a satisfactory polymer had been made, it had to be converted into a fiber.

PRODUCT REALIZATION PROCESS

SCIENCERESEARCH

ENGINEERINGRESEARCH

TECHNOLOGYDEVELOPMENT

COMMERCIALIZATION

NEW KNOWLEDGE AS DISCOVERY & UNDERSTANDING & MANIPULATION

OF NATURE

NEW KNWOWLEDGE AS FUNCTIONAL MANIPULATION

OF NATURE IN RESPONSE TO IDENTIFIED NEED

NEW KNOWLEDGE ASIMPROVEMENT

OF CRITICAL PARAMETERS &OPTIMIZATION OF PERFORMANCE IN

FUNCTIONAL MANIPULATIONOF NATURE

NEW KNOWLEDGE AS PROPRIETARY SKILL IN THE DESIGN & PRODUCTION

0F GOODS & SERVICES, UTILIZING FUNCTIONAL MANIPULATIONS

OF NATURE

SCIENTISTS& MANAGERS

SCIENTISTS& ENGINEERS& MANAGERS

SCIENTISTS& ENGINEERS& MARKETING

PERSONNEL& MANAGERS

SCIENTISTS& ENGINEERS

& MARKETING,PRODUCTION,

FINANCE PERSONNEL

& MANAGERS

RESEARCH UTILITY

TIME

COST

FUNCTIONALPROTOTYPEAND DESIGNSTANDARDS

UNIVERSITYLABORATORY

INDUSTRIALLABORATORY

INDUSTRIAL DIVISION

UNIVERITYLABORATORY & INDUSTRIAL

LABORATORY

Du Pont's fiber-spinning technology had been developed for the manufacture of rayon and acetate, which did not melt and had to be spun from solutions. The Chemical Department decided to try a potentially simpler, faster, and cheaper process: melt spinning. This entailed melting the solid polymer to a honey-like liquid that would be driven under pressure through a spinneret, which consisted of a number of very small holes in a metal plate. The extruded filaments would form solid fibers upon cooling.

Until they had a better idea how the product was going to be used, the developers did not give too much thought to the problems that would occur after the very fine filaments had been twisted together (as is done with silk) in bundles of twenty or thirty to make a textile fiber. Ultimately nylon had to be tested on standard textile machinery and put through commercial finishing processes.

After the major process steps had been conceptualized, teams of chemists and engineers could be assigned to work on each one. As new problems were recognized, the work was further subdivided. In retrospect, the development of nylon appears to be the solution of thousands of small problems, but this kind of engineering could begin only after the big decisions were made about how nylon was to be manufactured.

The development project can be split into three periods.

In the year following Bolton's decision in July 1935 to commercialize nylon 6-6, work centered on determining whether it could feasibly become a commercial success. In this feasibility stage of development, the most immediate problem was to work out a scheme for making the intermediate chemicals, especially hexamethylenediamine (HDA). HDA was very difficult to manufacture, requiring a multi-step synthesis.

When Du Pont decided that nylon did show promise as a new kind of textile fiber, the second phase of development began; it lasted roughly from the summer of 1936 until the end of 1937. In this phase, nylon had to be shown to be practicable, not just feasible. Also, the critically important decision was made then to concentrate on producing high-quality yarn for full-fashioned hosiery.

Finally, after learning that a satisfactory or maybe superior product could be made, Du Pont turned its activities toward making yarn with uniform properties on a larger scale. With bigger samples of yarn to knit, the textile companies could run nylon under standard commercial conditions.

Once several-pound batches of intermediates became available, experiments on polymerization started.

The major goal then became to find methods of producing polymer that would make uniform fibers. This meant stopping the reaction at a precise moment to control the polymer's molecular weight. After considerable experimentation, Wesley K. Peterson discovered that the addition of small amounts of acetic acid would regulate the extent of polymerization. This was another 'simple' solution that required considerable time and effort to be discovered.

Besides the HDA process and standardization of the polymer, the other major problem Du Pont faced in the early part of the development was that of spinning the polymer into fibers. At first, both melt and solution spinnings were tried.

In the solution process the nylon polymer was dissolved in hot phenol or formamide, and the hot, syrupy solution was pumped through a spinneret. As the filaments emerged from the holes, the solvent evaporated and solid fibers were formed. But this process looked unpromising because of the hazards and expense of handling and recovering the solvents.

Melt spinning had the appeal of simplicity, but it required developing a new technology for precisely metering a molasses-like fluid to the spinneret at a temperature of about 260 degrees centigrade. Also, at its melting temperature some nylon polymer decomposed, and the extruding filament broke whenever the resulting gas bubble went through a spinneret hole. A practical continuous spinning process required that filaments be spun in very great lengths without breaks. By early 1936, even though melt spinning was still far from being a workable process, work on solution spinning was discontinued.

By the summer of 1936 Du Pont was ready to move nylon into a bigger scale of development.

The company's Rayon Department reported that it considered the new fiber "a high quality yarn superior to natural silk" that would have a large market at two dollars a pound, roughly the price of silk. Preliminary estimates showed that nylon yarn could be produced for eighty cents a pound in a plant making eight million pounds a year. Even a very small plant could make money. On the basis of these optimistic forecasts, the research managers decided to expand the company's nylon-manufacturing capacity from two to one hundred pounds a day in order to improve the process and provide material for extensive testing. Nylon had entered its second phase of development. It looked good; now was the time to prove that it was so.

The Chemical Department constructed a glass melt-spinning assembly so that direct observation of the melted polymer would be possible. Experiments with the glass cell confirmed that decomposing polymer gave off gas bubbles that broke the fiber upon passing through a spinneret hole. Two principal researchers soon concluded that if the polymer were kept under pressure, the bubbles would dissolve harmlessly into the molten mass. This idea worked and removed the major obstacle to the commercialization of melt spinning. By May 1937 continuous spinning times had been increased from ten to eighty-two hours.

PRODUCT REALIZATION PROCESS

SCIENCERESEARCH

ENGINEERINGRESEARCH

TECHNOLOGYDEVELOPMENT

COMMERCIALIZATION

NEW KNOWLEDGE AS DISCOVERY & UNDERSTANDING & MANIPULATION

OF NATURE

NEW KNWOWLEDGE AS FUNCTIONAL MANIPULATION

OF NATURE IN RESPONSE TO IDENTIFIED NEED

NEW KNOWLEDGE ASIMPROVEMENT

OF CRITICAL PARAMETERS &OPTIMIZATION OF PERFORMANCE IN

FUNCTIONAL MANIPULATIONOF NATURE

NEW KNOWLEDGE AS PROPRIETARY SKILL IN THE DESIGN & PRODUCTION

0F GOODS & SERVICES, UTILIZING FUNCTIONAL MANIPULATIONS

OF NATURE

SCIENTISTS& MANAGERS

SCIENTISTS& ENGINEERS& MANAGERS

SCIENTISTS& ENGINEERS& MARKETING

PERSONNEL& MANAGERS

SCIENTISTS& ENGINEERS

& MARKETING,PRODUCTION,

FINANCE PERSONNEL

& MANAGERS

RESEARCH UTILITY

TIME

COST

FUNCTIONALPROTOTYPEAND DESIGNSTANDARDS

UNIVERSITYLABORATORY

INDUSTRIALLABORATORY

INDUSTRIAL DIVISION

UNIVERITYLABORATORY & INDUSTRIAL

LABORATORY

Du Pont's development team had now made significant strides toward its goal of producing a standard and uniform product, but no yarn had been knitted into stockings.

The first test came in February 1937, when Everett Vernon Lewis, a Rayon Department research chemist, took a few carefully measured skeins of yarn for a knitting test to the Union Manufacturing Company in Frederick, Maryland.

The Frederick hosiery manufacturer experienced difficulties with the new fiber in nearly every production process. It did not come off the spools properly; it snagged on the knitting machines; and after being dyed, it looked like a wrinkled mess that had "a not too pleasant gray color roughly approximating gun metal."

Undaunted, Lewis attributed these difficulties to inexperience with a new material.

Du Pont soon learned that quality requirements were very high for full-fashioned hosiery yarn.

Further testing was done at the Van Raalte mill in Boonton, New Jersey, and the first experimental stockings were made in April.

By July 1937 Van Raalte had knitted enough material to give Du Pont some definite feedback.

The yarn performed quite well. The outstanding defect was the tendency of the stockings to wrinkle during dyeing and the other finishing operations.

These wrinkles "completely destroyed the uniform appearance of the stocking."

A few months later it was discovered that these wrinkles could be eliminated by steam treating the stocking before dyeing.

TECHNOLOGYIMPLEMENTATON

RESEARCH

PRODUCTPLANNING

PRODUCT DESIGN

PRODUCTPRODUCTION

SOURCES OF DELAYS IN THE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

TECHNOLOGYRISKS

UNCERTAINTYABOUT

CUSTOMERREQUIRMENTS

TRADEOFFSBETWEEN

PERFORMANCEANDCOST VARIATION

IN PRODUCTION

NEED FOR PRODUCTION IMPROVEMENT

NEED FOR NEW PRODUCTS PRODUCTCOST/QUALITY

PROBLEMS

PRODUCTIONPROBLEMS

DESIGNPROBLEMS

In 1937, the Van Raalte mills had started turning out "full-fashioned hosiery excellent in appearance and free from defects." These stockings were virtually indistinguishable from their silk counterparts.

And Du Pont management had in hand the results of a report on the reaction of women to nylon. The experimental stockings were very durable, but they wrinkled easily and were too lustrous and slippery.

By then Preston Hoff of the Rayon Department, an earlier skeptic, found that "as the data accumulate, they continue to support our belief that in 'nylon‘. We have a product that surpasses rather than approaches the natural one."

He thought that many of the production problems would be solved in six months.

But before a commercial plant could be built, Du Pont's management decided that a middle-size pilot plant was necessary.

The executive committee's authorization of a pilot plant, on January 12,1938, signaled the end of the second phase of development. Nylon had been shown to be practicable.

Now it had to be proved on a commercial scale. Whereas earlier efforts had centered on making one good stocking, the focus of attention moved toward the production of millions of pairs. An experimental unit about a tenth the size of the projected full-scale units was designed to produce 250 pounds of nylon yarn a day.

When the pilot plant was authorized, one problem began to look much more formidable than before.

Silk filaments have a natural coating, sericin, that protects the fibers during textile processing. After the knitting is finished, the coating, known as size, is removed with boiling water.

Of course, nylon had no natural size. Du Pont needed to find a material that would form a protective film, be removable in hot water, not discolor the yarn, apply conveniently, and not accumulate on the knitting needles. The size problem took many months of trial-and-error work to solve. Working frantically, researchers in a number of departments contributed to the formulation of a new four-component size for nylon. This type of industrial research, though not glamorous in any way, proved absolutely necessary for the successful development of nylon.

The elimination of the nagging size problem occurred just when Du Pont's first full-scale nylon plant, in Seaford, Delaware, was beginning production.

TECHNOLOGYIMPLEMENTATON

RESEARCH

PRODUCTPLANNING

PRODUCT DESIGN

PRODUCTPRODUCTION

SOURCES OF DELAYS IN THE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

TECHNOLOGYRISKS

UNCERTAINTYABOUT

CUSTOMERREQUIRMENTS

TRADEOFFSBETWEEN

PERFORMANCEANDCOST VARIATION

IN PRODUCTION

NEED FOR PRODUCTION IMPROVEMENT

NEED FOR NEW PRODUCTS PRODUCTCOST/QUALITY

PROBLEMS

PRODUCTIONPROBLEMS

DESIGNPROBLEMS

Before it could introduce its new fiber, Du Pont had had to come up with a name for it, and a committee was formed to do so.

The company's president, Lammot du Pont, liked Delowear or neosheen. Another executive, Ernest Gladding, threw in Wacara, a play on Carothers's name, and later norun, which would have caused problems because nylon stockings did run. He then turned norun around to Du-ron but thought that sounded like a nerve tonic. So he changed the r to an I, making it nulon. This apparently was very similar to an existing trademark, and Cladding realized that advertisements would refer to "new nulon," a redundant-sounding phrase. Next, he changed the u to an i and got nilon, which unfortunately has three pronunciations: nil-lon, nee-lon, or nigh-Ion. The last was chosen.

Instead of registering nylon as a trademark, Du Pont made it a generic word that anyone would be free to use. The company's negative attitude toward trademarks had been engendered by the loss of its trademark for cellophane in 1937. The fact that hosiery became known as nylons probably would have cost them this one anyway.

While work continued, sample stockings became available. As more and more comments came in, the outstanding feature of nylons appeared to be their durability. Plus they looked like silk. (Several hucksters even sold silk stockings as nylon at this time.)

The fact that nylons felt cold and clammy did not dampen enthusiasm for them. Practicality and good looks seem to have outweighed comfort.

Finally, nylons went on sale nationally in May 1940, and the demand was overwhelming.

Convinced that nylon would prove superior to silk, Du Pont initially set its price 10 percent higher than that of silk.

In less than two years Du Pont captured more than 30 percent of the full-fashioned hosiery market. Then the United States' entry into World War II led to the diversion of all nylon into military uses. During the war flu Pont increased its nylon production threefold, to more than twenty-five million pounds a year; the biggest uses were for parachutes, airplane tire cords, and glider tow ropes.

When the war ended and women began to demand nylons again, their demand greatly exceeded supply for two years.

SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY Discovery Bottleneck Theory Invention

ENGINEERING COMMERCIALIZATION Systems Standards Design Processes

TYPES OF RESEARCH INQUIRIES

Nylon became far and away the biggest money-maker in the history of the Du Pont company, and its success proved so powerful that it soon led the company's executives to derive a new formula for growth.

By putting more money into fundamental research, Du Pont would discover and develop "new nylons" -- that is, new proprietary products sold to industrial customers and having the growth potential of nylon.

This faith seemed to be borne out in the late 1940s arid early 1950s with the development of Orlon and Dacron and the continued spectacular growth of nylon. Du Pont had effected a revolution in textile fibers, and the revolution propelled earnings skyward.

In fact, Du Pont, which for its first hundred years had been an explosives manufacturer. In the twentieth century, it became a diversified chemical company. By the 1950s, Du Pont was principally a fibers company, that had some other businesses on the side.

TASKS OF SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION IN INDUSTRY

1. OBTAINING AND ALLOCATING FUNDS FOR THE SUPPORT OF SCIENCE IN THE CONTEXT OF INVENTION OF NEW TECHNOLOGY.

2. HIRING UNIVERSITY-PRODUCED PH.D.s AND TRAINING THEM INTO INDUSTRIAL SCIENTISTS.

3. SELECTING AND OVERSEEING RESEARCH CENTERS/PROJECTS FOR SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS AS TARGED BASIC RESEARCH.

4. INVENTING AND PATENTING NEW TECHNOLOGY.

5. COMMERCIALIZING THE NEW TECHNOLOGY INTO NEW PRODUCTS OR PRODUCTION PROCESSES OR SERVICES.

BUSINESS CONCEPTS IN INNOVATION

STRATEGIC PLANNING

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

IMPROVE TECHNOLOGY INCURRENT PRODUCTS

DEVELOPMENT

INNOVATE NEXT GENERATION TECHNOLOGY SYSTEM

NGT PRODUCTPLATFORM

NEW PRODUCT LINE

GROWTH OFNEW BUSINESSES

GROWTH OFEXISTING BUSINESS

In technological innovation the leap from the idea of technical feasibility to the idea of a product for a market application is the entrepreneurial creativity for commercial success.

SUMMARY: LESSONS FOR SCIENCE ADMINISTRATION

Intellectual property in the form of a patent can be very valuable in the early times of a new technology, allowing for an early market and profit margins before competition can enter with look-alike products.

SCIENCE ADMINISTRATON IN INDUSTRY:

OBTAINING AND ALLOCATING FUNDS FOR THE SUPPORT OF SCIENCE IN THE CONTEXT OF INVENTION OF NEW TECHNOLOGY.

HIRING UNIVERSITY-PRODUCED PhD's AND TRAINING THEM INTO INDUSTRIAL SCIENTISTS.

SELECTING AND OVERSEEING RESEARCH CENTERS/PROJECTS FOR SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS AS TARGED BASIC RESEARCH.

INVENTING AND PATENTING NEW TECHNOLOGY.

COMMERCIALIZING THE NEW TECHNOLOGY INTO NEW PRODUCTS OR PRODUCTION PROCESSES OR SERVICES.