WisBusiness: Spiegelberg to receive top honor from UW Alumni Association

By Brian E. Clark

WisBusiness.com

Harry Spiegelberg will receive the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Wisconsin Alumni Association tonight. 

Spiegelberg (whose name means “looking-glass mountain” in German) earned his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from UW-Madison in 1959. He spent his entire career – mostly in R&D – with Kimberly-Clark. He retired in 1996 as vice president for technology transfer.  

WisBusiness.com editor Brian Clark spoke with Spiegelberg recently about his work and his honor.

Brian Clark:  How do you feel about getting the UW Distinguished Alumni Award?

Harry Spiegelberg: Obviously, I’m very thrilled and honored by it. I’m frankly surprised. But it’s a great reason for my four children to come home for the event, so I am very pleased about that.

Clark:  How do you feel about getting the UW Distinguished Alumni Award?

Spiegelberg: After I graduated, I was offered a job at (Kimberly-Clark). Back then, there were all kinds of jobs. Employers were trying to do everything to get you to sign on with them. In fact, one company sent a corporate plane out to pick me up for an interview. That doesn’t happen anymore.

In any case, I joined K-C and worked there for a couple of years, except for a six-month tour of active duty in the Army.  After that time, I concluded that while I liked K-C a lot, I did not like engineering – at least as K-C was practicing it back then.  I wanted to get more into discovery and invention, rather than opening up a catalog and collecting parts.

Clark: What did you do?

Spiegelberg: When I told K-C that I had been accepted to graduate school, they said they wanted to offer me a leave of absence. They also said they would pay my health insurance – and that I could work whenever I wanted: Saturdays or Christmas or whenever.  Since my wife and I were expecting what turned out to be twins, I was actually very pleased with that idea.

So I took them up on their offer and I was gone for four years, though I did work one summer and then one Christmas, but only one because that was a little too much and I needed a break.

Ultimately, I got my master’s and my Ph.D. from the Institute of Paper Chemistry in Appleton. I had thought about going back to Madison for my Ph.D., but I couldn’t do that because I’d earned my bachelor’s degree in Madison and they have a rule against that.

Clark: Did you ever consider working anywhere else?

Spiegelberg: Yes.  I interviewed with other companies, but decided to stay with K-C because I liked the industry. I went back to K-C as a researcher and stayed there for the rest of my career in research and development.

One of my first managerial assignments was running the New Concepts lab, a small group at the forefront of consumer products research.  That turned out to be a wonderful experience. In 1973, Darwin Smith reorganized the company and reorganized research and engineering and I was offered a spot to become director of consumer businesses R&D and I took that job.

Clark: During your time in the New Concepts lab, did you come up with any breakthroughs?

Spiegelberg: Yes we did. I was charged with coming up with a new wiping material, as in kitchen towels, and we did create a product that we called “Epic,” an extruded polymer integrated composite. It turned out that its first application was not in wipes, but was in Kotex Light Days pads. It was such a wonderful material for that. It was one of the things that caused that product to take off and it was a brand new product in the marketplace.

It did well because it was soft and absorbent and had a lot of integrity. It was a combination of polypropylene and cellulose and K-C is one of the leaders in using this. When K-C first started making feminine pads back in 1920, they had a woven gauze cover that kept it intact while in use and strong at the ends. Back then it was attached to a belt.

K-C had thousands of looms to make these.  Then Harlan Hershey invented scrim-reinforced-material or SRM. It was an amazing thing. You made a mesh out of nylon threads in both directions – longitudinally and across – and then they applied with an adhesive to cotton linters, which are made from the little short fibers left over when cotton seeds are removed in the ginning process. One scientist said they were so short they only had one end.

In any case, that is what was applied to the scrim. The point is that this breakthrough allowed seven or eight machines to replace thousands of looms. The next invention was the spun-bonded process using polypropylene. One machine replaced those seven or eight machines which had replaced the thousands. There was quite an expanse of productivity as well as better and more suitable material for the purposes.

Clark: Was the new material an immediate success?

Spiegelberg: Perhaps because this was a new category not only for K-C, but for the world, it presented some challenges to get it introduced into the marketplace – including some internal resistance.  But we were able to proceed and it became a major part of the business – not just for K-C.

Clark: In 1985, you became vice president for Consumer Tissue Research. Seven years later, you were named vice president for technology and patent strategy, and in 1993 you became vice president for technology transfer. Which one of those posts did you enjoy most?

Spiegelberg: That’s a good question because the positions were so different. In the first one, I was responsible for research to support the consumer tissue businesses around the world. The bulk of my funding came from the U.S., but we also had responsibilities for the Far East and other areas. It was pretty challenging, but also enjoyable.

When I got into technology transfer, it was a much smaller organization. But it had a lot of impact for the corporation because we – as many companies are doing today – were seeking technologies from the outside that we could bring in from universities and institutions like that.

Clark: Did you get many good ideas from the UW system?

Spiegelberg: Yes, but none of them had major impact on the company. We funded some research back when I was still in consumer tissue in the chemical engineering department that was pretty good that had to deal with fluid flow. And that helped us with some of our processes. Fluid flow happens a lot in tissue making because you are dealing with a slurry that is 1 percent consistency, or 99 percent water and 1 percent fiber that you lay down on a wire. All done at speeds of 70 miles per hour. It’s not easy to get that uniform in terms of looks and strength.

That’s also true in the spun-bonded area where you are spinning polymer threads in a web. The interface there is the polymer web and air currents.

Clark: Did K-C hire many UW graduates during your time?

Spiegelberg: Oh yes. I did a lot of interviewing of chemical engineers and other engineers because I got a great deal of pleasure out of that. And the caliber of people coming out of UW-Madison is just outstanding.

Clark: How has the paper industry changed over the decades you’ve been involved with it?

Spiegelberg: You have to talk about which part of the paper industry you mean, because they are all quite different. The consumer part, which is tissue products and all the other things like diapers, is doing quite well. There are challenges with costs, of course, but there is a stable market out there and the international market is growing.

The printing paper side, like newsprint, is not doing so well because there is a decline in the number of papers around the country for a variety of reasons. And magazine papers and similar papers and books are struggling in the U.S. because of foreign competition. It has truly become a global industry.

In nations like Finland, they have made significant investments in brand new machines that are able to produce products less expensively than those that have been around for some time here in the U.S. So it is a challenge to compete. I’d say overall, it is holding its own. But it is not as healthy as it was some time back.

Clark: What do you think the future holds for Wisconsin’s paper industry?

Spiegelberg: Well (pause), I want to capture my words carefully here. I’ve seen examples where it shows lots of promise, where they are working on products that are differentiated and are able to command a decent price in the marketplace as they can move away from commodity products and make that difference appealing to the customer. Firms that are doing that will prosper. That is the reason that companies like the Kimberly-Clarks and Proctors out there have done well because they are doing that with the consumer side of the paper products business.