By Mike Boyer
Enquirer staff writer

Although small in stature, M. Eugene Merchant has cast a long shadow over manufacturing technology over the last 60 plus years.

The 91-year-old mechanical engineer, who stands barely over 5 feet tall, developed the first scientific view of what happens when a cutting tool digs into metal.

Those calculations - developed before World War II while a young engineer at the old Cincinnati Milling Machine Co. (now Milacron Inc.) - are still used today.

Dr. Gene Merchant, a 91-year-old manufacturing legend, is a consultant with TechSolve Inc. in Bond Hill. (Craig Ruttle photo)

Later, as director of research planning at Milacron, he envisioned the role computers would play in integrating manufacturing operations.

"He's been a visionary. He's consistently been out in front as a thought leader,'' said Gary Conley, president of TechSolve, the nonprofit manufacturing assistance organization where Merchant is a senior consultant.

"So many of the things he talked about 20 to 40 years ago (are) finally coming to pass. It's incredible,'' said Conley.

Merchant is being recognized by Manufacturing Engineering, the monthly magazine of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, as its third Master of Manufacturing, in a cover story published today.

Joins august company

Previously, the magazine honored John Parsons, a Michigan engineer called the Father of Numerical Control, the technology for using computers to precisely control machine-cutting tolerances.

Last year, it recognized Richard Morley - who in the late 1960s conceived the programmable logic controller that replaced relay circuits in machines, a key to factory automation.

"Engineering is largely an anonymous profession,'' said Brian Hogan, editor of Manufacturing Engineering.

"Look around you, nearly everything you see was manufactured,'' he said.

Engineers play a key role in creating those products and the machines that make them.

Yet, he said, even many of today's manufacturing engineers aren't aware of the contributions of their predecessors.

He said the world owes an enormous debt to engineers such as Parson, Morley and Merchant.

The recognition is just the latest in a lifetime of accolades for the soft-spoken native of Essex Junction, Vt., who continues to work daily at TechSolve writing reports on manufacturing trends.

'It's so much fun'

Merchant says he had no plan to retire.

"It's so much fun,'' he said. "All my life, the work I've done has been fun.''

Over much of his career, Merchant traveled the world - visiting research labs while working on new technology.

In 1995, he was inducted into the Automation Hall of Fame. In 1997, he was the first recipient of the Japan Society for Precision Engineering Prize. In 1986, he was the first recipient of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers' Manufacturing Medal, which was named in his honor.

Once in the 1970s, when the late James A.D. Geier - Milacron's CEO and grandson of its founder - was introduced to the head of Japan's Okuma machine-tool company, the Japanese executive bowed and acknowledged: "Cincinnati Milacron, Dr. Merchant's company.''

Richard Kegg, Milacron's retired vice president of technology and manufacturing development, said, "Jim Geier really thought highly of Gene's vision. He loved to listen to Gene talk about what's going on.''

Merchant's vision of the role that computers would play in manufacturing were the seeds for Milacron's early leadership in factory automation, Kegg said.

Today, computers are so commonplace it's hard to believe that 40 years ago many experts didn't envision they'd be important to manufacturing, he said.

"It wasn't obvious,'' said Kegg. "It was extremely visionary, because a lot of people just didn't believe it. There was skepticism about it. Much of what he said has come to pass - and there's a bunch more that will come.''

Merchant is still on the cutting edge. Last year, he completed an online monograph on the 20th century history of machining and grinding research. The idea of publishing online through TechSolve's Web site was his own.

Taught self to type

Although an early advocate of the computer's potential, he didn't start using one himself until about a decade ago.

"I'm not a fast typist. I had to teach myself,'' he says.

Merchant's view is that manufacturing will continue to expand globally, with the next big challenge figuring out how to integrate those worldwide operations.

"Every piece of hardware, every piece of software - every person in all those entities - have to be able to communicate and collaborate with any other entity anywhere in that enterprise,'' he said.

The Internet is providing some of that integration today, but he says other technologies such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence will have to be further developed to complete it.

'Standard of living will rise'

"People often work by intuition to solve complex manufacturing problems,'' he said. "So we have to develop technology that can be more powerful than human intuition to deal with the lack of a stable system. It's going to take a lot of development of artificial intelligence.''

And he isn't among those concerned that the United States is losing its manufacturing edge to the rest of the world.

"We raise the standard of living for the rest of the world by doing more manufacturing overseas,'' he says. "Our standard of living will rise as well. ... I don't see why it should modify our standard of living. Sharing it doesn't take away from what we have.''

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E-mail mboyer@enquirer.com