Rubber consultant: Industry needs more mentors

MAUMEE, Ohio—A company that hires a consultant like James P. Barnhouse gets a wealth of experience, as well as the strong opinions that come from 46 years in the rubber industry.

Such as, the industry needs more people like Jim Barnhouse.

It's not ego, but observation, that spawns the consultant's belief that the rubber business needs more mentors.

Barnhouse said the evolution of the industry has resulted in a lack of veterans who can pass on their hard-won knowledge to younger chemists and other technical people.

The knowledge gap isn't bridged enough by technical conferences, he said.

“The companies are super-secret with their technology and super-tight with their money,” Barnhouse said, and it is very difficult, if not impossible, to obtain a firm's blessing to give a technical presentation other than boiler-plate material.

“It seems they want to put a lid on everything. That's frustrating.”

Barnhouse said rubber companies in general don't encourage or are reluctant to allow technical people to attend industry conferences, for proprietary or financial reasons.

“You can't go out and learn something new,” and exchange ideas with peers from other businesses, he said—not giving away company secrets but engaging in knowledge cross-fertilization.

Computers are excellent tools, Barnhouse said, but they can't replace the hands-on knowledge veterans can provide to younger technical people via mentoring. He speaks from experience.

“I had some outstanding mentors in my early days at B.F. Goodrich,” said the consultant. “Older guys who had done the job for years were still working there, and they would give lots of good advice.”

Barnhouse said he had a big advantage in his career starting out at BFG at its Engineered Systems Division in Akron.

“Goodrich made everything in rubber, from hot water bottles to rubber balls, condoms, shoe soles, belts,” he said.

Every two or three years, Goodrich would rotate its young chemists to a different product area.

For a couple of years, Barnhouse would be working on compounding rubber for graphic arts, then switch to working on chemical tank linings for rail cars, followed by a stint with rubber bands.

“I got a taste of everything except tires,” he said, never moving into that division.

He pointed to Goodyear's Flying Squadron and programs at other manufacturing giants as similar activities.

That type of training is missing in rubber manufacturing today, Barnhouse said.

“We have big rubber companies, but they have gravitated to what they consider their core business,” he said. That means if the firm makes molded rubber widgets, “that's what you'll be doing your whole life.

“It may be a different widget, but it's still a widget.”

In this common scenario, the only way to get broad experience is to leave your job and start over every couple of years, Barnhouse said. “And that's suicide in regards to coming up with a savings plan.”

At Goodrich, he eventually was transferred to the firm's Elastomers and Latex Division.

He became a market development manager, putting in lots of overseas travel, promoting and selling BFG's polymers and rubber chemicals.

Barnhouse was in that division when Goodrich sold it to Nippon Zeon Co. Ltd. in 1989.

The employees had misgivings when the deal was made.

“Most Americans had a bad feeling about being sold, especially to a non-American entity,” he said. “A lot of companies would basically fire everybody and rehire who they wanted.”

Not Zeon. “In this case they wanted the people, more than probably anything else. They did their utmost to make it a seamless transition, and they did a really nice job,” he recalls.

Barnhouse, after letting the company know he didn't want to relocate to Chicago, was transferred to Louisville, Ky., in a tech service position.

In 1998 after 30 years with BFG and Zeon, he left the supply side of the business and returned to manufacturing with the Aeroquip Corp. hose operations in Maumee, later bought by Eaton Corp.

“Aeroquip was a lot of fun,” he said. And very different from his time at Zeon.

“In a tech service position, you are helping other companies develop recipes for everything under the sun, lots of field trips to plants, solving tech problems with their people,” he said. At Aeroquip, he worked with hydraulic hoses, “in many cases competing with the guys I used to visit all the time.”

The change in status made for a change in relationship with some people.

“Polymer suppliers who sold to Aeroquip looked at me as a spy because I came from a polymer supplier. They didn't have a lot of trust, I guess,” Barnhouse said. On the other hand, he had an edge from working in the past with Aeroquip's competitors.

“It gave me an advantage because if you spend time in a competitor's plant, you know what they are doing, the kind of equipment, and you get a flavor of their philosophy about how they are doing business. Not their trade secrets, just the core way they do things.”

After 16 years at Eaton Aeroquip, Barnhouse realized it was time to go. “I felt burned out. What can you do in hydraulic hose for 16 years?”

Now he's doing consulting for two clients—he figures that's about all he can handle—companies that are in need of experience in their compounding departments. “They have people who are very anxious to learn. If I'm any good as a teacher I will cut my own throat,” and won't be needed, he said.

“That's OK. Someone else can use me as a consultant,” he said. “I get more reward out of it, knowing that someone else has picked up the gist of rubber compounding, how to do things and do them right.”

This interaction with compounders fits with Barnhouse's character, since he's always considered himself a “hands-on” type. A self-described “bad student” who had poor study habits, married young and raised a family, all of which resulted in an associate's degree, rather than a Bachelor of Science degree.

That said, Barnhouse holds eight patents and has four or five more going through legal channels.

He credits that to the “Bullheadedness of a Barnhouse.”

“I have some patents on some pretty weird chemistry, something you'd expect out of a Ph.D., not someone like myself,” he said. “It happened because I was told it wouldn't work,” and was too stubborn to quit.