Lab Success in Changing Times with Diverse Workgroups
Today’s laboratory operates in an environment of economic recession and decreasing profits. Corporate leadership and Customers continue to expect more, while decreasing resources put pressure on laboratories to deliver more. At the same time, many employees have had their morale and trust shaken by downsizing and reorganization.
Laboratory managers with strong technical skills must hone their leadership skills in order to effectively translate Upper management objectives into business critical results.Laboratory success will depend on the ability of effective leaders to communicate with workgroups from diverse cultures, backgrounds, and generations.
The Speaker Topics, Workshops, and Roundtable discussion of our 30th Annual Conference have been designed to allow experts in the field of effective leadership and management to give you the skills that will ensure adaptability to the constantly changing landscape of business priorities and workgroup diversity.
| Tuesday, October 27 | |
| 8:30–5:00 pm | Workshops |
| Wednesday, October 28 | |
| 8:30–5:00 pm | Workshops |
| 6:00–8:30 pm |
Registration
Georgia Tech Global Learning Center |
| 7:00–8:30 pm |
Opening Reception
Georgia Tech Global Learning Center |
| Thursday, October 29 | |
| 7:30–8:45 am | Continental Breakfast and Exhibitor Displays |
| 8:40–8:45 am |
|
| 8:45–9:30 am |
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| 9:30–10:15 am |
|
| 10:15–10:45 am | Break & Exhibitor Displays |
| 10:45–11:30 am |
|
| 11:30–12:15 pm |
|
| 12:15–1:15 pm | Networking Lunch |
| 1:15–2:00 pm |
|
| 2:00–2:45 pm |
|
| 2:45–3:15 pm | Break & Exhibitor Displays |
| 3:15–5:00 pm |
Roundtable Discussions
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| 5:00–6:00 pm | Networking & Supplier Exhibits |
| 7:00–9:00 pm |
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| Friday, October 30 | |
| 7:30–8:30 am | Continental Breakfast |
| 8:30–9:00 am | Business Meeting and Presentation of Distinguished Service Award |
| 9:00–10:00 am |
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| 10:00–12:00 noon |
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Sponsors
Agilent Technologies
Conference Banquet Sponsor
Waters Corporation
Opening Reception Sponsor
Micromeritics
Program Printing Sponsor
Bruker Analytical Services
Conference Souvenir Sponsor
Thermo Fisher
Networking Luncheon Sponsor
Exhibitors
General Conference Information
Location
All meetings and workshops will be held at the Georgia Tech Global Learning Center, 84 Fifth St., NW, Atlanta, Georgia, 30308. Located in the heart of Atlanta, the Learning Center is specifically engineered to support successful meeting outcomes.
Accommodations
A block of hotel rooms for ALMA conferees is being held at the Regency Suites Hotel, 975 West Peachtree Street, Atlanta, GA, 30309. The hotel room rate for the ALMA conference is $129 for either a single or double room, plus tax. Complimentary internet access is available at the hotel.
To make reservations, call 800.642.3629 or 404.876.5003. Be sure to mention that you are attending the ALMA Conference. You may also click here to book online.
The deadline for hotel reservations at the conference rate is September 21, 2009.
Getting to the Regency Suites Hotel
Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport provides connections to all major domestic and international hubs.
Rail: Atlanta’s Rapid Rail (MARTA) can be boarded at the airport and stops at the hotel. Departures occur approximately every 10 minutes. Stay on train through downtown and exit the N.4 Midtown Station. Hotel is adjacent to MARTA entrance. Exit the station on the 10th street side and the hotel is immediately on the left on the corner of 10th Street and West Peachtree. Current cost is $1.75 per person. The ride time is approximately 30 minutes.
Shuttle: The Atlanta Airport Shuttle runs every 15–20 minutes at Ground Transportation from 7am–11pm daily. The current cost is $12.00 per person one way and $19.00 round trip. There is a pick-up station located at both North and South terminals outside baggage claim. Please specify “The Regency Suites Midtown” for delivery to the front door. For additional shuttle information call 404.524.3400.
Driving Instructions from Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport: Northbound on I-75/I-85: Take exit #250 (10th Street). Make a right onto 10th and proceed two lights to West Peachtree. The hotel is on your right at the corner of 10th and West Peachtree. Go through the light at West Peachtree and the underground parking garage is on your right, just at the back of the hotel. Press the button on the keypad for the front desk attendant, who will open the gate for parking. If you pass the Wyndham Midtown Atlanta you have gone too far. The Regency Suites Hotel is one block before Wyndham Midtown.
Conference & Workshop Registration
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Cancellation
Written notice of cancellation must be received on or before September 21, 2009. $30 will be deducted from refunds to cover processing. -
Group Discounts
Groups of 3 or more from the same organization may qualify for reduced rates. Please inquire for further details.
Registration is now closed.
ALMA Pre-Conference Workshops
October 27, 2009
- Applying LEAN Principles in the Analytical Laboratory.
- Polishing Your Style and Presence.
- Performance Appraisals that Actually Improve Performance.
October 27–28, 2009
October 28, 2009
- Building Effective and Efficient Teams.
- Influence Without Authority.
- The Engaged Labforce in Changing Times.
Applying LEAN Principles in the Analytical Laboratory
1-Day Workshop: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 Enrollment Fee: $495 Instructors: Derek Lake and David Zoller
This is a one-day interactive course for analytical laboratory leaders who want to learn how to implement LEAN principles in their workplaces for improved productivity. LEAN is a methodology designed to remove “waste,” or inefficiency, from a process. LEAN utilizes tools such as value-stream mapping and visual management to remove unnecessary activity such as non-standard work, allowing for the implementation of simple and fast adjustments to current processes. LEAN action workouts allow participants to make and evaluate changes completely within the scheduled workout. This course will focus on optimizing performance in the total laboratory workflow, which in turn has positive effects on sample throughput, turn-around time, and other laboratory metrics. The course will pivot between classroom learning and hands-on activities, allowing participants to apply the principles as they learn. This course will not be an in-depth study of LEAN principles and theory. Instead, participants will be introduced to these principles and theories and how they can be applied in a laboratory setting. Actual laboratory LEAN events conducted at SABIC Innovative Plastics will be provided as examples during the course.
Topics covered in the workshop include:
- Other LEAN Tools: Kitting, Water Spiders, Standard Work
- Laboratory LEAN Examples
- LEAN Action Workout in a Simulated Laboratory ⇑
- LEAN Background
- The 5 Principles of LEAN
- Identifying Types of Waste
- Value Stream Mapping
- Visual Management and 5S
Polishing Your Style and Presence
1-Day Workshop: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 Enrollment Fee: $495 Instructor: Kathryn Frazier
Polishing Your Style and Presence will focus on you, your personal style, attitude, energy, communications, leadership, and expressive tools. Learn to burn a great impression in the minds of those you work with that will bring results! Career Branding has become a term for describing how professionals are perceived in the workplace. You already have a unique style that expresses your professional brand. Do you know your positive brand qualities? Your visibility may be one-on-one with a stakeholder, your manager, in teams, via internet, video and teleconferencing. Quick snapshots are rapidly recorded about your influence potential, ability to verbally communicate or e-mail “style.” What does your “presence” say when you are under a tight deadlines, business is in a downturn, or time for an additional assignment? Learn “A Five Step Approach to Increasing Your Brand Awareness” and the opportunity to develop a plan of action for critical areas you decide need polishing. Enjoy exercises designed to give you feedback in each area. The devil is in the details when it comes to “Polishing Your Style and Presence.”
Participants are requested to bring a prior ten-minute presentation (optional) to provide an instant feedback opportunity to polish your style and presence. ⇑
Performance Appraisals that Actually Improve Performance
1-Day Workshop: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 Enrollment Fee: $495 Instructor: Wally Hauck
The Challenge: Are you frustrated with your performance appraisals? Do they create anxiety in you and your employees? Do you or your managers merely go through the motions or try to avoid them altogether? Do they make things worse by damaging motivation and performance?
If you answered YES to any of these please don’t worry, you’re not alone. Second only to firing someone, managers see performance appraisals as their most disliked responsibility. A study conducted by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) confirmed that up to 90% of performance appraisal processes are ineffective.
Take Home Value and Objectives: This highly interactive presentation will challenge the way we think about the typical performance appraisal. Current performance appraisals impose a barrier to trust, quality improvement and motivation and today organizations must fully engage the hearts and minds of all employees to achieve strategic results and high profitability.
In this session participants will learn:
- How the CDPP can significantly increase accountability.
- How CDPP can help poor performers “de-select” quickly and top performers excel.
- How CDPP can save valuable management time and increase profitability. ⇑
- The reasons why typical performance appraisals will never work well with the current design.
- How to think differently about performance in order to make significant productivity improvements.
- How to replace performance appraisals with a New Ground Breaking process called the Continuous Development of People Process (CDPP) to create long-term motivation, morale, problem solving, productivity, and quality.
**CANCELLED** Maximizing Efficiency and Efficacy in the Global Laboratory
2-Day Workshop: October 27-28, 2009 Enrollment Fee: $845 Instructors: Jan Damm and Alexander Debets
This interactive workshop aims to bridge gaps between analytical laboratories of multi-site companies, between QC and R&D labs, and between the laboratory and regulatory authorities. The workshop is oriented towards analytical lab managers who want to have a “first-time-right” start in handling company-wide harmonization of analytical methods, procedures and processes leading to time and cost savings. Key topics here are harmonization of procedures for Method Development, Method Validation and Method Transfer. Other key topics include regulatory compliance, application of modern concepts like Process Analytical Technology, Risk-Based Approach, Paperless Lab (regulated electronic archiving) and Efficient Procurement Processes for the Analytical Lab.
Upon completion of the workshop, you will be able to:
- Identify the key aspects of analytical method development and method description.
- Develop and describe methods in such a way that they are applicable in various analytical laboratories of your multi-site company.
- Develop and validate analytical methods first time right. ⇑
- Transfer analytical methods efficiently and effectively, also from R&D to QC labs.
- Handle the concepts of PAT and Quality by design.
- Perform risk management and risk assessments.
- Take home some challenging ideas about electronic data handling and purchasing processes.
Building Effective and Efficient Teams
1-Day Workshop: October 28, 2009 Enrollment Fee: $495 Instructors: Kathryn Frazier
Project Team Meetings, LEAN/Six Sigma Team Meetings, Technical Team Meetings!!!!!
Who wants more unnecessary and boring meetings! Do you suffer from meeting paralysis? Some estimate that 50% of meeting time is wasted. Technology and work teams have completely transformed how work must be conducted locally, regionally, and globally. Managers and Lab Professionals are expected to lead effective often diverse and cross-functional teams in an efficient and timely manner. In the technical environment, performance is also evaluated on your ability to communicate and influence team members to deliver business results! Learn how to plan and facilitate energized team collaboration meetings by building high performing team members who feel valued and appreciated. Participants will learn new skills through highly interactive exercises and meeting simulations, and will receive a step-by-step handbook. The focus will be on meeting structure, verbal and written communications, and leadership discipline to develop effective teams.
- Informing and Communicating.
- Inspiring and Motivating Teams.
- Involving and Engaging Team Members.
- Influencing Task Accomplishment.
- Celebrating Success ⇑
- Assessing Your Team Leadership Style Inventory.
- Facilitator Leadership Model/Handbook.
- Building Win-Win Team Dynamics Culture.
- Global Teams and Cross Cultural Communications.
Influence Without Authority
So Logic Won’t Work…Now What Do You Do to Influence Difficult People?
1-Day Workshop: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 Enrollment Fee: $495 Instructor: Mary Adams Viola
As a technical professional, you are trained and rewarded early in your career for solving problems using logic and scientific knowledge. Unfortunately these skills seldom help to get what you need from other people to do your job. These barriers can lead to tremendous frustration and lost time. Whether you are experiencing conflict with a difficult colleague or boss or are struggling to get cooperation from other departments, there are strategies and skills that you can learn to be more effective in achieving your goals. This workshop allows you to explore and experience proven strategies that you can immediately use back in the office.
The workshop involves the following elements which are designed to accelerate learning:
- “Support” where participants have the chance to gain feedback from their peers in the class in a safe way and then expand their learnings to the larger community.
- The “Action” phase (could also be called “Application”) where each participant looks at how and where the new learnings/skills can be effectively applied. ⇑
- “Mini-lecture” where the instructor introduces the concepts and best practices.
- “Self-Assessment” where participants have a chance to evaluate where they are regarding the topic area.
- A “Challenge” where individual or group exercises expose participants to the subject matter in a practical, “real-world” manner.
The Engaged Labforce in Changing Times
1-Day Workshop: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 Enrollment Fee: $495 Instructor: Wally Hauck
This highly interactive presentation will challenge the way participants think about the typical organizational environment. Wally Hauck utilizes accelerated learning methods to involve the members in examining their underlying beliefs and practices concerning motivation, performance, and rewards. Because we are transitioning into a knowledge economy from the industrial age, the engagement of the hearts and minds of employees is more important than ever to create a sustainable competitive advantage. The current methods of the “carrot and stick” are less effective now because they contradict the intrinsic motivations that hold the key to long term loyalty of employees. An environment that creates long term loyalty must have at its center trust and the freedom to experiment when problem solving. Unfortunately, many leaders are “addicted” to control strategies. They must learn the “new” skill. They must begin to influence people not control them. Wally Hauck will share stories of a lab he has worked with for 8 years. The organization dedicated itself to improving its customer-focus, employee motivation and involvement, and to achieving a positive working environment and higher levels of productivity. In 2008 the lab was awarded the Delaware Malcolm Baldrige Quality Commitment Award.
In this session participants will learn:
- How to create a culture of trust and accountability without threats or bribes.
- Three tools that will shift non-productive interactions to productive and innovative interactions focused on improvement and development. ⇑
- Key factors for creating a culture of high performance and engagement and how to implement them.
- How to identify barriers that prevent engagement and take action to remove them.
- How elements of the current Performance review Process can prevent engagement and what to do instead.
Workshop Leaders
Dr. Mary Adams Viola is the Acting Director of the MSEM program at the Gordon Institute and a cofounder of the Tufts MSEM program in India. She teaches courses in leadership development, innovation, and new product development. Dr. Viola has more than 20 years of industrial experience in both R&D and manufacturing. Dr. Viola received her BS, MS and PhD. from Tufts University.
Dr. Jan Damm studied chemistry at the university of Leiden, The Netherlands. After finishing his PhD thesis he joined the R&D organization of Organon in 1989. At Organon he held several positions and is currently senior director of Quality Systems. He chaired the global harmonization steering committee within Organon for the analytical Chemistry, Manufacturing and Control processes, and the international committee for Validation of Automated Laboratory Systems. He was a board member of the Dutch Association for Analytical Laboratory Managers and co-organizer of several bi-annual conferences of the European ALMA organization.
Dr. Alexander Debets over 20 years experience in analytical chemistry, project management and lab management at N.V Organon. He held several positions as managing scientist within analytical development departments for drug substance and drug product, and chairman of the global harmonization steering committee for the analytical Chemistry, Manufacturing and Control (CMC) processes within Organon. He participated in the Organon international Procurement Improvement team. He was general manager of Organon Development GmbH. Currently he is responsible for the Investigational Products Supply unit of the Schering-Plough facility in Oss.
Kathryn Frazier has worked collaboratively for over 17 years with highly technical professionals including lab teams in General Electric and Fortune 100 Companies. Known for a highly engaging style, she is often asked to customize innovative professional development programs and team building events. Kathryn has worked closely with Ph.D faculty and technical presenters to enhance PowerPoint delivery, teaching style, and cultural awareness leading diverse global teams. Kathryn is a Green Belt and has trained Green, Black and MBB’s in “Facilitating Successful Six Sigma Project Teams.” Kathryn earned her Masters, International Business, St. Louis University; B.S., Journalism, Communications, University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Major, Ret, ANG. Kathryn is currently the director of the Organizational Leadership & Training Center in St. Louis, Missouri.
Wally Hauck’s talent is working with leaders to help them think in terms of systems and to realize how the broken processes have manifested themselves as people problems. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania; an MBA in Finance from Iona College; and earned his PhD in Organizational Leadership from Warren National University in 2008. His book Blueprint for Success provides ideas that can help leaders unlock their potential, remove metal blocks to success, and provide new insights to accelerate positive change. Wally’s chapter, The Power of Influence: 7 Secrets for Successful Leadership, provides leaders with insights to create an environment of trust, continuous learning, and employee loyalty. Wally has worked with dozens of firms and government agencies in the last decade.
Dr. Derek Lake joined SABIC Innovative Plastics in Mt Vernon, IN, in 2003 as an analytical chemist. Currently Derek is the quality leader for the Lexan* Process Technology Group. Derek has been involved with and led multiple LEAN laboratory improvement projects while at SABIC-IP. He obtained his PhD in analytical chemistry from the University of Delaware and a BS in chemistry from Lindenwood University.
Dr. David Zoller is Chemical Testing Leader for the Analytical Technology group at SABIC Innovative Plastics in Mt. Vernon, IN. David obtained his Six Sigma Black-Belt certification from General Electric in 2006. Over the past nine years with GE Plastics (now SABIC Innovative Plastics), he has served in a variety of roles in research and development. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Delaware and his B.Sc. in Chemistry from Virginia Tech. ⇑
Contact Information
Please contact ALMA’s office regarding any questions about this Conference.
Association of Laboratory Managers2019 Galisteo Street, Building I-1
Santa Fe, NM 87505
Fax: 505.989.1073
Tel. 505.989.4683