THE WORLD CITIZEN I participate in weekly Skype meetings with the Indian and Polish development departments ALL-ROUND JOB WITH AN INTER NATIONAL PROFILE Weekly Skype meetings with Indian engineers, visits to factories in Germany, France and India, courses in England and meetings with Japanese customers. These are some of the experiences Kirsten Ravn Larsen has had since she joined the development department at Roulands Braking ApS in Odense in 2014. It is not a completely normal laboratory job Kirsten Larsen does. Roulands Braking ApS makes brake blocks and brake linings for saloon cars, lorries and is part of a global concern with factories in India, France, Germany and China. Roulands' HQ is in Odense where research, development and quality is placed, whilst production takes place in three Indian factories. Apart from this there is a Research & Development department in Poland and assembly plants in China and France. It is a very atypical laboratory job. I draw up specifications for raw materials and support industrial chemists in their work in creating new recipes for products. It is work which demands a good knowledge of the testing methods in a laboratory, together with experience in examining and evaluating the differences between the test and the materials, says Kirsten. Experience and further training and education She was trained back in 1984 and attended the first laboratory class at Dalum Technical College. After a couple of years at the Dairy Industry's Central Laboratory in Hjallese, she moved to Dalum Paper Factory where she was for 26 years until the factory closed in 2012. At Dalum 20 colleagues are Polish, and her manager is from England. THE WORLD CITIZEN Paper Factory she had continuously undertaken further training and education; e.g.bachelor in operations and production planning, bachelor in commerce, accountancy courses and after closure she had the opportunity of taking a 6 week course in Systems Applications and Products in Data Processing (SAP). After a couple of short-term employments, she was in March 2014 rung up by Roulands Braking ApS who had seen her job profile on Jobnet. They wanted to employ me in a position which an American academic had had. It was a completely new world for me to come to a company producing brake parts. But at Dalum I had also been used to working with untraditional tasks, so it suited me fine. My tasks at Roulands is amongst other things to register, procure data sheets and draft technical specifications for those raw materials which are used in production. In the very nature of things very high demands are made on safety as they are used in a vehicle's braking system where it could be a matter of life and death, emphasises Kirsten Ravn Larsen. Lots of international tasks Today some of the raw materials come from India where the brake parts are also manufactured. It could be mineral powders and fibers where samples are sent from India to Denmark to be controlled and assessed whether they are suitable to be part of the production. Kirsten makes sure that the raw material samples are tested physically in Rouland's own laboratories whilst some are also sent to be controlled in outside laboratories for their chemical content. In the pilot department prototypes of brakes are produced, which apart from tests in the laboratory and on dynamometers, are tested by test drivers before they go into production. All this is managed from Denmark where 23 employees in the development department quite naturally have a lot of communication with the Indian manufacturers. I participate in weekly Skype meetings with the Indian and Polish development departments and have also visited the Indian factories and colleagues along with my Quality Manager in September 2016. Here we had a meeting with a Japanese customer and experienced the very special Japanese ceremony of exchanging business cards. I have also visited our French and German sister companies and participated in two global development meetings in Odense and Germany respectively with our owner, Steve Wang, and R&D participants from the EU, USA and India. There were 25 participants and I was the only woman, says Kirsten, who also in her daily work uses English in that her immediate All-round job Another of her tasks is to guide the Indian employees in taking samples correctly, so that they give a true picture of the material. And the measurement data from India forms the basis for the recipes in the mixtures which constitute the raw material, when the brake parts are manufactured. Kirsten also functions as an internal quality auditor in the company, and she takes part in meetings with the raw material suppliers. She has benefitted a great deal when participating in HK's lectures on international communication and cultural understanding. Apart from this she also acts as interpreter in relation to Danish colleagues who do not speak English and assists her Polish and Indian colleagues who are working in Denmark when they need help with translation and understanding of practical matters, e.g. communication via the internet to the Danish authorities, doctors etc. China is the next stop Rouland is in the process of building a new factory in China, where as in India they hope to be able to make use of the local raw materials. And Kirsten hopes that she will also be able to play an active role here and hopefully visit the factory and meet her Chinese colleagues. For the sake of my foreign colleagues I have the title chemist. Originally, I am a laboratory technologist, but if you translate it directly the position is regarded as being low in the hierarchy, and consequently you do not get any respect. But my position requires that I work with industrial chemists and engineers, and therefore I have to be on the same level as them, emphasizes Kirsten, who aims on having many exciting years with international contacts. n 21 MEET 9 SPECIALISTS WHO ARE CREATING THE FUTURE THE DEV ELOPER THE IT SUPER USER DITOR THE QUALITY AU THE TECHNOLOGIST THE COORDINATOR THE LOGISTICIA N THE ANALYST THE TRAINER LABORATORY TECHNOLOGIST EDUCATION THE WORLD CITIZEN CONTENTS A PROFESSION UNDERGOING CHANGE In Dansk Laborant-Forening/HK (DL-F) we know that our profession contains a vast number of exciting job opportunities. 03 Preface: A profession undergoing change 04 The Analyst: Guarantor for consumer safety 06 The Quality Auditor: Ensures that quality THE ANALYST ANALYTIKEREN 1 GUARANTOR GARANT FOR FOR CONSUMER SIKKERHED FORBRUGERNES SAFETY THE ANALYST Eva Jørgensen has been a laboratory technologist since 1989 and has worked at the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration's laboratory in Ringsted since 2006. At that time, she was, together w THE QUALITY AUDITOR ANALYTIKEREN 1 ENSURES THAT GARANT FOR QUALITY IS OF THE FORBRUGERNES SIKKERHED HIGHEST ORDER DITOR THE QUALITY AU When laboratory technologist, Susanne Jeppe sen, is doing her job at Novo Nordisk A/S in Bagsværd it is done for the most part at a desk and in front of a compute IT SUPER USER BRIDGE-BUILDER BETWEEN RESEARCH AND IT DEVELOPMENT Since Mads Molich completed his education as a laboratory technologist in 2006, he has for the most part not had two working days that are the same. Today he works at Novozymes A/S in Bagsværd as a scientific laboratory technologist o THE COORDINATOR FLAIR FOR ORGANISING AND GATHERING KNOWLEDGE THE COORDINATOR As a working environment and emergency and security coordinator Henriette Lerche no longer works in the laboratory. Her workplace is the long corridors and offices at the Niels Bohr Institute at Copenhagen University on THE LOGISTICIAN SAY WHAT YOU NEED AND I'LL GET HOLD OF IT Laboratory technologist Heidi Irming is a buyer at DTU Biosustain, Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability (CFB) in Hørsholm. She has recently been extremely busy in connection with the moving of DTU Biosustain to a completely THE TRAINER ANALYTIKEREN 1 THE LABORATORY TECHNOLOGIST TEACHES THE DOCTORS OF THE FUTURE Thousands of young medical students have over the years become acquainted with Helle Dyhrfjeld Jensen's professional guidance in the laboratories of the Panum Institute in Copenhagen. Helle is employed as a pr THE DEVELOPER I LEARN SOMETHING NEW EVERY DAY Lene Odgaard Kamstrup is a laboratory technologist with the Danish-American company CMC Biologics A/S, CMC, in Søborg. The biotechnology company is a customer-based company. This means that they have many different customers which they undertake develop THE TECHNOLOGIST FROM ALARM CLOCKS TO ROBOTS Inge Lise Stripp Petersen has always enjoyed technology, IT and programming. Since she was little she has taken everything apart from alarm clocks to sewing machines. Today she is a laboratory technologist at Novo Nordisk A/S in the API Bio Analysis depa THE WORLD CITIZEN I participate in weekly Skype meetings with the Indian and Polish development departments ALL-ROUND JOB WITH AN INTER NATIONAL PROFILE Weekly Skype meetings with Indian engineers, visits to factories in Germany, France and India, courses in England and meetings with Japanese cust WORTH KNOWING ABOUT THE GENERAL EDUCATION SYSTEM WORTH KNOWING ABOUT FURTHER EDUCATION & TRAINING In Dansk Laborant-Forening/HK(DL-F) we are working on creating a transparent way through the education system. It can be in relation to mem bers, employers as well as the political system. In Dansk L ABOUT DANSK LABORANTFORENING/HK (DL-F) Dansk Laborant-Forening/HK (DL-F) is a cross-union association in HK. We organize approx. 10,000 members whose primary educational background is laboratory assistant, laboratory technologist, environmental engineer or environmental technologist; they are employ