These valuable 15-minute consultations are FREE but fill up quickly, so register for ICEC USA and book your Ask the Experts appointment today!
Meet one-on-one with some of the industry’s most accomplished experts who can help with your converting questions and challenges.
OUR ICEC USA EXPERTS
Kenneth McCarthy
Ken McCarthy has over 50 years of experience, primarily related to coating. He worked at Polaroid for 32 years and then at Multilayer Coating Technologies LLC (a spin-off of the Polaroid New Bedford coating facility) until it closed in November, 2007. Since then, he has developed and run a consulting service, Clean Room Coating Solutions. His areas of expertise include coating fluid mix preparation and delivery, coating operations, clean room operations, coating applicator design, environmental management, and new product development. In addition, he has extensive experience in new product translation, from laboratory through scale-up into full-scale manufacturing, and in analyzing and eliminating coating defects. He has three patents related to Polaroid product development.
Ken is currently Co-Chair of the AIMCAL Coating and Laminating Committee. He has authored 50 presentations for AIMCAL meetings, webinars, and courses.
Ken received a PhD and MS in Chemical Engineering from Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and a BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame.
Michael Gaffney
Mike started in the Gravure/Graphic world in 1984 with the Morrill Press in Fulton, NY. The business was acquired finally by Sonoco Products Company of Hartsville NC. During this time, the organization opened new facilities and purchased other businesses and locations. Mike’s responsibilities grew from cylinder finisher to Sonoco Flexible’s Divisional Graphic Manager. For over 15 years as divisional manager, he was responsible for the gravure and graphic portions of the business. Additional duties also included managing the relationship between Sonoco and Keating Gravure UK (currently Trident Charlotte). Mike also spent two years as a consultant with Starpak, Houston TX, working graphic management and flexography. At the end of the two years, Mike returned to Trident and remained as a Print Production Manager for 7 years, Currently, residing in north of Charlotte NC, with my wife Vicki.
Rock LaManna
Rock LaManna is The Deal Flow Guy; with his comprehensive international database and a deep network of trusted relationships, he is continuously facilitating successful deals between buyers and sellers. He is also the President and CEO of LaManna Consulting Group. Rock and his team provide strategic guidance to business owners and entrepreneurs, empowering them to achieve their goals. Over the course of his career, Rock has launched, owned, built, and sold businesses. He is uniquely positioned to guide business owners and entrepreneurs in every stage of their business journey. He pinpoints weaknesses, spots opportunities, and provides not just solutions but results. With Rock's coaching and his team of professionals - the best in their respective fields - Rock helps business owners and entrepreneurs succeed.
Rock is passionate about business, from start-ups, to scale-ups, to team-ups. He is committed to sharing his knowledge, experience, and expertise to help others have an easier time than he did along their own business journey. Find him online, sharing his big ideas and expounding upon the future of business.
Rock hosts a podcast, The Printer's Edge with Rock LaManna, where he answers common questions, addresses current issues, and shares his wisdom to help business owners make sense of the competitive printing industry.
Rock publishes two blogs - The Owner's Corner, where he offers guidance for business owners and entrepreneurs on buy, sell, and grow and Rock's Blog, which focuses on global M&A activities.
Rock's YouTube channel is packed with hard-hitting videos where he tells it like it is, pulls no punches, and offers solid advice on buy, sell, and grow.Rock publishes a monthly column for L&NW, The Deal Flow Guy.
Catch Rock in person - he is a frequent speaker and panelist at print industry conventions and business events.
Steve Lange
Steve is the managing member of ProcessDev, LLC, a manufacturing process consultancy in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. He has more than 35 years of experience in process and material development in the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods industry, retiring as a Research Fellow in R&D at P&G. Applying his chemical engineering education from the University of Missouri-Columbia, he developed films, nonwovens, laminates, and adhesives with suppliers and developed processes to convert them into baby diapers and other products. As an internal company expert at P&G in web converting, he improved processes for bath and facial tissue, feminine hygiene and adult incontinence products, wipes, laundry and dish pods, pharmaceutical patches, batteries, shaving blades, dental floss, floor cleaning substrates, and flexible packaging. He has expertise in modeling/simulation, experimental design, and data analytics. He is a co-inventor on 26 U.S. patents related to product, material and process innovations. In his spare time, he plays the trombone in an orchestra, wind ensemble and jazz bands.
David Roisum
Dr. Roisum is a well-known authority in the areas of web handling and converting. He has authored books on winding, rollers, industrial problem solving and how to buy and sell web machinery. His tenth book, the must-have, 750 page, Web Handling Handbook has just been published. He has coauthored or edited several others. Additionally, he has written 200 articles, conference papers and other publications. He has more than 400 instructional clips on his AllWebHandling channel of YouTube that has seen more than 150,000 views. He has been a technical editor for Converting Magazine with a monthly column entitled Web Works since 1994 and for AIMCAL’s Converting Quarterly with a column entitled Web Wise since 2011. Dave has been honored by TAPPI with their Finishing & Converting Division Award, Thomas W. Busch Prize and Finest Faculty awards. He was elected TAPPI Fellow in 2003 and received AIMCAL’s President’s Award in 2013.
Dave received his BS in Mechanical Engineering and MS in Engineering Mechanics from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and his Ph.D. from the Web Handling Research Center where he later became an Industrial Advisory Board member.
Dave has worked for the Beloit Corporation as a designer of high-speed winding machinery and later as a manager of winding research, and for Kimberly-Clark as an internal converting expert serving all business units. He has been a principal of Finishing Technologies Inc. for three decades, providing consulting services to more than 500 clients who convert or manufacture: paper, film, foil, nonwovens and many other materials. He has accumulated much practical experience working in nearly 1,000 plants over the course of more than three decades. He has shared his experience with more than 5,000 students of his award winning and trademarked Web101SM course.
