Plastics Hall of Fame 2024: Kurt Swogger

Austin, Texas — Fifty years ago, when Kurt Swogger was a recent college graduate, he figured plastics was as good of a career move as any other.

Fresh out of school, he saw polymers as an exciting opportunity, but he readily admits he knew very little about the business back in 1972 after graduating from Case Institute of Technology, now Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland.

Armed with a chemical engineering degree, having taken four or five polymer courses in college, Swogger found himself accepting a job at Dow Chemical Co. Now, more than five decades later, Swogger is being inducted into the Plastics Hall of Fame for his work in polymers.

The idea of plastics appealed more to him than potential jobs at Lincoln Electric, the well-known welder maker, and consumer products giant Procter & Gamble, so it was off to Dow headquarters in Midland, Mich.

The early 1970s was a time of discovery for Swogger, both personally and professionally.

"It was different, and you think about all the things you could do with polymers," he said, looking back. "Back then, you were replacing wood. You were replacing metal."

Plastic was still the new kid on the block when it came to substrates, and people were both enamored and curious.

Swogger, who did not take himself too seriously when talking about his time at Dow, recounted his victories over the years. He first worked in polymers before detouring to the company's agricultural chemicals group for four or six years at one point, then returned to plastics.

At each stop along the way in plastics at Dow — and there were several — there were some recurring themes with Swogger's success.

As a research director, he made a name for himself by finding solutions for troubled parts of the company by studying processes and identifying the difficulties.

 

To Swogger, this was more a matter of common sense than anything else. But nobody else had solved the problems before he arrived.

"What I did was figure out the problem and get these really smart guys," he said, to help craft solutions.

Time and time again, that formula worked. And it did not hurt that he had an appetite for risk that would often cut through bureaucracy and shorten the time it took to find solutions.

On April Fools' Day in 1991, he found himself on the first day of work in the company's polyethylene division. It was a time of great uncertainty for PE at Dow, which contemplated selling off a part of the operations and merging the rest with another firm.

Instead, Swogger got to work with his colleagues — he peppered many, many coworkers' names from his time at Dow in to his conversation to make sure they all received credit — and found a way to turn the division into a profit juggernaut.

The chemistry of plastics can be a bit daunting, but the company was able to develop a linear low density polyethylene formulation using a catalyst that created what is known as long-chain branches. This molecular structure opened up a world of applications and was eventually commercialized at Dow's Insite brand that has been a consistent money maker for the company for more than 30 years now.

These patented long-chain branches improved the processability and mechanical attributes for LLDPE, opening up many new markets for the resin. This, he said, created "a huge competitive advantage over everybody else."

A key to success, Swogger said, was his willingness to create a multifaceted approach to projects where several different aspects were being developed simultaneously. This cut out the time needed when seeking milestones along the way.

"We did everything at once. Everyone would tell you, 'You can't do that,'" Swogger said. "I had smart people around me."

This parallel process approach could be viewed by some as being riskier, but considering the state of the LLDPE business at the time, Swogger did not hesitate. "Remember, we were going to be sold. What was our risk? Zero," he said.

Working for a company the size of Dow meant Swogger could assemble a team of like-minded all-stars that could tackle complex issues and find solutions, he said. He just needed to know where to look for the talent. And he was not afraid to share the glory when projects went well, writing letters to his colleagues' bosses to triumph their accomplishments while working together on a specific project.

That kind of gratitude was remembered, and those same people were willing to work again with Swogger as the next challenge arose.

Swogger's vision of blending management and scientific acumen had a goal of being both fast and accurate, but that didn't mean "we didn't have a glitch in the giddy-up," he said, from time to time in what he called his "speed-based philosophy."

"How do you do this fast and accurately?" he said.

Swogger is one of 17 people, some posthumously, being inducted into the Plastics Hall of Fame this year. His initial reaction when he heard the news? "Honest to God, 'I'll be damned.' I never dreamed it would happen.

"I'm extremely honored," he said. "It has a lot to do with the people you work with."

Swogger looks back on a lifetime and said he really didn't have any expectations beyond finding a job after graduation.

"I was one of the first out of my family to finish college. They were just delighted I came out as an engineer," he said.

Swogger said he was content to spend all those years at Dow before retiring in 2008 and then starting his own business. These days, he is CEO of Molecular Rebar Design, a company working to find applications for carbon nanotubes.

The jobs at Dow were good and the money was good, he remembered. Sure, he probably could have gone on to try to pursue a CEO job outside of Dow as a younger man, but he was happy being a researcher at a company with deep pockets, Swogger said.

"Research guys get away with more entertaining behavior because you are expected to do that," he said.

Risk, Swogger said, has always suited him.

"I don't do drugs; I do risk. My various bosses that worked best for me, they were also risk-takers," he said. "The other thing I liked to do is I made connections. To me, that's really fun, to make the connections. We had the most diverse group at Dow. I'd find people and put them in the right role and promote the hell out of them."