SELF on the Road 2017 - Day 7

We started off our day at the corporate offices of Avery Dennison by jumping into the business perspective. Cynthia Guenther, Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations, gave us a company overview highlighting the different areas of the business including RFID tags, adhesives, and medical technologies. We got a sense of the market spaces Avery Dennison exists within and how the company expects those markets to change over the coming years. We then traveled to the Covina R&D facility where Rajib Anwar, a recent KU School of Engineering graduate, gave an insightful lecture discussing how skills learned in the classroom can be utilized in industry.

After lunch, we got the opportunity to attend breakout sessions about key skills Avery Dennison engineers use  daily. The importance of modeling and the techniques associated with it were explored by one engineer. Another explained the how gas chromatography (GC) can be used to separate out and identify the compounds contained within adhesives. Then, we saw the application of Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA) in testing rheological properties of non-Newtonian materials. We also got to see a chamber where humidity was varied so the drying kinetics of different materials could be measured at various conditions. Finally, we saw the application of lasers in the label cutting process. We wrapped up the day with a trip to the Griffith Observatory and a beautiful view of the Hollywood sign. Overall, it was a very well-rounded and eye-opening experience that exposed us to both the business and engineering aspects of Avery Dennison.