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The primary rubber-forming process he works in is molding, including compression, transfer, and injection methods. His experience with molded products is broad, including automotive weather strip, milking inflations, various types of vibration mounts, seals, diaphragms, aerospace components, vehicle tracks, and myriad others. His over 30 years in the industry took him from very low- to very high-volume products, single cavity to multicavity molds, standard and exotic polymers, and lab presses to giant rotary injection presses. His involvement is often from process development to process optimization for molding operations, often using design of experiments methods for maximum efficiency.

Expert's original function in the rubber industry was as a compounder and process engineer, and that expertise remains a major part of his practice. Several of his publications are centered on compounding work. Balancing multiple rubber properties to an optimum for a given function is one of the more interesting challenges in the field and has become a specialty for him. Also, compounding for dynamic properties (resilience, damping, and fatigue life) has become a significant area for him. However, he also focuses on achieving desired final compound properties with efficient processing characteristics, which is also of key importance to good business.

He notes that there are well over 20 families of elastomeric polymers, and he has worked with most of them over many years in the industry. Writing chapters and complete textbooks for the rubber industry, as well as giving courses in rubber technology for the ACS Rubber Division, required him to stay in touch with a much broader group of the polymer families than is common, which is a great help in any kind of selection process for elastomeric materials. His expertise in rubber technology in general has caused him to be sought out as an expert witness in several major lawsuits involving rubber products.

As a manager, consultant, writer, and frequent trainer of engineers and chemists in rubber technology, expert has polished his presentation skills and increased his background knowledge of the overall field extensively. He has provided training to numerous companies and organizations (Clemson University, the University of Wisconsin, Worcester Polytech, and others) as well as to various subgroups of the American Chemical Society. This includes both basics of the technology, as well as applied methodology (compounding, etc.) and hands-on training using equipment (including, but not limited to, mills and mixers).

Starting in the 1980s he received training in statistics and statistical methods, and he subsequently branched out into statistical process control. From there he proceeded into design of experiments (DOE), which has become a major specialty for him, including publishing a book on the topic and providing advanced training in the subject for companies and organizations. The application of statistical methods to tabulating, organizing, and doing detailed analyses of many kinds of data naturally followed from all this, and has also become a major facet of the services he supplies to clients. These methods combine very well to serve numerical optimization purposes. He teaches design of experiments methods regularly for corporations and institutions, at several levels, and has served as a beta tester for development of specialized software for DOE users.

Starting with original training in a Du Pont rubber laboratory in 1965, he has expanded on his experience in all common and many less-common modes of rubber material and rubber product testing. He has also been involved with development of specialized tests for particular properties (such as engineering properties) and purposes, with an emphasis on rubber bond testing; he has several publications on the latter topic. He has managed rubber laboratories and works frequently with many rubber labs, both corporate and commercial. He is very familiar with the body of ASTM test methods for rubber and has written extensively on the topic of rubber testing.

His long experience with advanced rubber products for which bonding is a critical property began with rubber-fabric bonding and progressed into crash-critical rubber bearings for helicopters in 1976. Subsequent employment as a manager of one of the founding companies for rubber adhesives led to immersion in this methodology, and he has presented some of the most detailed technical papers available on this topic. He also instructs on this subject for the University of Wisconsin.

Expert investigated and optimized the production of PTFE composites by designed experiments. He developed special rubber compounds for milking applications, acceptable to the German health office. He optimized a rubber compound for a superabrasive application involving food preparation. He maximized flex/abrasion life for snowmobile tread compounds. Expert helped set up and provide training for technology transfer from a U.S. plant to Shanghai.