INDUSTRIAL CHYMIST The Ubiquitous “s” B. J. Lubtrof, Ph. D. Whether one is primarily a chemist that uses the cgs system or an engineer that feels more comfortable with fps units, odds are that you pay more attention to distance and mass variables than you do to poor old “s”the time variable. This, in spite of adages such as “Time is money” and (6 In investing, timing is everything.” This neglect of “s” somehow doesn’t seem right in industry, where dollars are the most urgent variable. Perhaps this neglect is due to time not appearing alone and distinguishable as does, say, the diameter of a reactor or the weight of a mole. No, time hides under various guises. The size of a reactor is determined by the desired amount of production per unit time, and the efficiency of the catalyst is also measured by reciprocal time. The importance of a patent is determined by its conception date and issue date. The value is high only if it comes at the right time, and a “good” product is valueless if it comes too soon or too late. Is it any wonder then that industry is so time conscious? The cost of a technical man-year, for example, is estimated variously to lie between $20,000 and $40,000. O n an hourly basis, this is equivalent to $10420. Isn’t it foolish, therefore, to spend a man-year doubling reaction rate when the reactor only costs $50,000; or a day making an intermediate that can be bought for $50; or spending half an hour (you and the typist) writing a letter to someone who is a $3 ’phone call away; or failing to subsidize properly a cafeteria so that people take an extra 15 minutes ($2.50-$5.00) to go to a restaurant. I knew of one company that required quadruplicate forms, with two signatures, to control photocopy purchases when
the average value controlled proved to be about a dollar. At the other, more modern extreme, lie the companies that send a supplier a signed, blank check as a purchase order-no written quotations, invoices, billings, and receipts. From what I hear, it works, so I’ve been handling my personal check book similarly. Then there is the “Crash Program.” There is the story of the military requesting a device that required solution of some pretty high-level problems of physics. A well-known academic physicist was consulted and he conceded that a solution might be forthcoming in about a year given three good men. The military wanted the answer immediately and asked if 36 men couldn’t manage things in a month. The physicist’s considered response : “The probability of success would be about the same as bearing a child in one month if it had nine fathers.’’ Yet industry persists in crash programs. Why? Consider a small continuous plant-say one that’s making 10 million Ib/yr of a 50p!/lb chemical. The daily value of its production is of the order of $15,000. When that plant goes down, it is economical to put 10 people on solving its problem even if nine of them contribute nothing to the solution except to eliminate possible causes of the trouble. I n fact, one could afford to use 40 people if they got the plant back on stream only twice as fast as could one man. [Let t = h r to come back on stream with 40 men at $15/hr and 2t = hr with 1 man. Cost with 40 men = (15,000/24 40 X 15)t = 1250t. Cost with 1 man = (15,000/24 15)2t = 1280t. J Sometimes it’s even worse than that. Suppose a customer is building a new plant which can use the competitor’s additive “X,” which costs twice as much as your additive
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“Y”; if you won’t be ready to produce “Y” until six months after the customer’s plant is to start up, then you’re dead, if substituting “Y” for “X” requires a major process change. Maybe somebody should start working week-ends and maybe Long Range Research should orient itself to solving production problems, forthwith. So much for hours, days, and months. How about years? A U.S. patent is enforceable for 17 years, so when someone makes a patent decision, he is making a 17-year prognostication. How often do we feel unjustified assurance in making patent decisions? Are we justified in deciding not to pursue patent protection on a product because we don’t have an economical way to make it (right now); or on a polymer because it doesn’t (yet) have the desired physical properties; or on a process because the yield (so far) is unattractive? And if you make a Decision of the Third Kind -“Let’s not decide right now,” then sure as sunrise, you’ll find yourself junior party to an interference when you do decide to file.
DR. L U B E R O F F has been working at the interface between chemistry and engineering since receiving his Ph.D. from Columbia in 7953. He has been associated with American Cyanamid and Stauffer Chemical Co., and is Dresentlv Manager u of Process Research for The Lummus Company, Bloomjeld, N . J . His publications which appear in the scient$c and patent literature, both here and abroad, number several dozen. They are characterized by the diversity ofjields they cover: from pesticide residue analysis through homogeneous catalysis to f u l l process frow sheets.
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