Designer profile

Technical transfers are difficult but not impossible, he found

When business equipment manufacturers displayed their wares in New York in November of 1969, Roger Kuhns, lower lip thrust forward, moved like a gazelle from one piece of equipment to another, showing potential customers how easily his cameras and bonders can make identification cards.
     "That guy really is a great salesman," said one visitor as he moved away from the booth, looking somewhat dazzled by the performance.
     Such energy seems to be characteristic of Kuhns whenever he has approached a new activity. He holds five degrees, two of them technical. He rapidly enumerates the list, which includes a degree in physics from the Univ. of Chicago, political science from the Univ. of Washington, and law and education from Harvard.
     Early in his career, Kuhns became a civilian procurement officer for the Navy, contracting for some $250 million of equipment a year. He then set up a contracting department at the National Science Foundation. Kuhns soon realized that his counterparts in industry made many times the income he did. So he determined to move on to greener pastures.
     His first position was with the Defense Products Div. Of American Machine & Foundry (AMF). When he joined the division, its work was 100% defense. When he left, it was only 60%.

From many, a few.

"That was my contribution," he says. How did he bring about the shift? "I asked the old timers there---the ones who had been around 10 years or more---to suggest commercial products the division could make that would be related to its technical and production strengths."
     By "panning for hidden gold," in this way, Kuhns uncovered 157 suggestions. Of these ideas, only four --- a small percent --- were to become commercially viable.
     Ratios like that are very hard for engineers in defense industries to understand, says Kuhns. They simply don't realize that consumers will turn their backs on what seems like a perfectly good idea. They have little experience with the surveying and marketing techniques that precede introduction of a commercial product, and little sense of adapting ideas to feedback from field tests.
     At AMF much of the technical and production strength was centered around unitized packaging, the conversion of flat sheet to loaded package at high speed and high tolerances. The Defense division had also developed hydraulic equipment for positioning 40-ton Bomarc missiles within a few seconds of arc. Thus the commercial offspring took the form of packaging machines, candy vending machines, and hydraulic bandsaws for cutting bar stocks of steel.
     "There is a myth making the rounds nowadays," says Kuhns, "that aerospace and military technology leads to a fallout in civilian products. Since working in industry, I have often been pressured by NASA to isolate cases of such fallout and help publicize them. But the truth is that technological transfers occur only after a lot of very hard work. There are no easy, direct product transfers."

Opposite poles.

Kuhns admits that the hydraulic bandsaws were better because of hydraulic skills the diversion had developed. But the emphases on military and commercial design are diametrically opposed, he says. The former is concerned with performance and will double the cost for a 5% improvement in performance.
     Besides, space and military equipment is designed for performance in extreme environments that simply are not applicable to commercial products. Commercial designers, by contrast, are keenly cost-conscious and will trade off 50% in performance for a 10% reduction in costs.
     In some cases, Kuhns believes the emphasis on cost reduction may have gone too far. Production in the U.S. is sloppy. You don't find many U.S. cars abroad, he reflects.
     After AMF, Kuhns spent a few years at ITT. And then he moved on to Itek, where he was concerned with corporate planning, and again with finding commercial applications for military technology.
     One Itek invention with commercial potential was the Quad camera that an engineer there had developed. It could make up to four identical photographs of an individual simultaneously. As it turned out, Itek decided against developing the camera commercially. So Kuhns and six other people from the company bought the invention in 1963 and formed Avant, Inc. to develop it.

Public pointers.

Their idea was to adapt the camera for use in hospitals, defense plants, police departments, and other institutions that have to make large numbers of identification cards. Kuhns and his colleagues carried out some fairly extensive market testing to determine what customers would need in such systems.
     As a result of market tests, Avant has created four photographic identification systems, covering a range of prices and performance. It has also developed a design philosophy that emphasizes simplicity and easy maintenance.
     "Often identification cards are made by clerks who are somewhat awed by machines of any kind," says Kuhns. "So we have made the cameras and associated bonding units simple enough for a 4th-grade child to operate."
     They have eliminated as much electrical and electronic circuitry as possible, preferring more reliable mechanical elements --- mechanical switches instead of micro-switches, for example, he says. And design is built around modules. If trouble develops, a maintenance person can release a couple of screws, remove the faulty module, replace it, and be back in business. "All-thumbs repairs," he calls it.
     As a final point of design philosophy, Kuhns notes that the equipment has been conceived for operation in hot or cold environments --- from -30 F to 130 F and in humid jungles. The equipment is rust-proof, constructed largely of stainless steel and anodized aluminum, uses special rubber and sterling silver contacts.

Black and white.

The least expensive, simplest unit makes one black-and-white photograph at a time with a Polaroid Swinger camera, redesigned with more durable shutters, lenses, and viewfinder. This camera imprints the photographic image on a card in about 1 sec. To get the final product, the operator places a chemically-treated paper, a Thermochip, over the card, slips it into a plastic folder, and then into the bonder. In 3 to 5 sec. The card is ready for use, though admittedly it is still a bit hot to hold.

Or in color.

The Quad camera takes color Polaroid film and is available with an associated piece of equipment that develops the film in the required 60 sec. A cutting machine for the system includes a T-square fitting to position pictures so they can be cropped without snapping off heads or ears. A bonding machine to fuse the picture and a card with personal data into a tamper-proof unit completes the system.
     The more complex systems will make both Quad photographs and simple card photographs in flexible combinations for larger, more demanding jobs.
     For those who would go about panning the streams of military work for potential commercial successes, Kuhns offers no easy answers. "You have got to have management support and then get to the man who is actually doing the work, who knows what is going on," he says. "And quite likely this man will be inarticulate, so communication is difficult. Once you have used his ideas, you better give him credit. Put his name on the patent. It is essential to inspire a sense of fairness, a confidence among engineers that they are not being exploited."
     The identification system has nine patents issued and about 30 pending. About half are in Kuhns name and the rest in his colleagues' names, he says.
     On his business cards, Kuhns carries no identification other than his affiliation with Avant. "I am the president," he admits. "But in a small company everybody has many jobs to do. I have to roll up my shirtsleeves and take charge of repairs sometimes, do engineering, be purchasing agent. A title is a crutch and I don't want to rely on it."

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