Forum Speakers

Ram Charan will speak on managing through stagflation. He is the coauthor of the bestselling Leading Through Inflation, Recession and Stagflation and a dozen other books. A former award-winning Harvard Business School professor, he is a world-wide expert on business strategy, execution, corporate boards and building a high performance organization. He has worked with the CEOs of some of the world's most successful companies, including GE, Bank of America, Verizon, Coca-Cola, 3M, Merck, Aditya Birla Group and Tata Group.

Michael Levitt specializes in burnout prevention, workplace culture, and preventing the “Great Resignation” and “quiet quitting” in organizations. This talk will address challenges and provide senior leadership with some ideas and tips on how to navigate through external and internal issues that might be impacting manufacturing companies. The talk will identify what burnout is, what the signs of burnout are, and provide actionable steps to help employees and management prevent and recover from burnout.

Robin Longenbaugh, Reelcraft, will share how their team created Committed Talent through their Champion Program. Reelcraft is a sister company of Ferry Industries and manufactures the widest range of hose, cord, and cable reels as diverse as heavy duty hose reels used in the light, medium, and heavy industry, automotive service, and a wide variety of OEM applications.

Eugene Tabone, NOVA Chemicals will share how rotomolders should be knowledgeable of advanced recycling(AR). Announcements of new deals are made by the major petrochemical industry players on a regular basis. This presentation will discuss the reality of the current state of AR as well as the challenges to the scale-up journey ahead.

Pat Long (Formed Plastics), Alvin Spence (Centro Incorporated) and Adam Covington (Ferry Industries) will share their companies' experiences with what cyber security challenges, what they've done and how they're becoming more secure. An open discussion will follow.

Rotomolders Carsten Erkel (Elkamet), Conchita Miranda (Soluciones Industriales Aplicadas, SAPI de CV "Miraplastek” ) and Corey Claussen (Custom Roto Mold) will share their experiences collaborating internationally as part of their businesses and what we can learn from doing business across borders.

Robin Longenbaugh (Reelcraft), Jori Gilbreath and Melissa Derheim (API-Plastics) and Rhonda Griffin (Centro) will serve on a Human Resources Panel, sharing thoughts and answering questions about recruitment, retention, and company culture.