An Interview with Lee Lomas
Lee Lomas is the director of Consumables Manufacturing at Bio-Rad Laboratories in Hercules, California. Because Bio-Rad produces diagnostic tests for the current SARS-CoV-2 virus, it is considered an essential business and Lee is back at the laboratory managing how Bio-Rad’s factories can become more efficient and employees can remain as safe as possible. I am grateful that Lee was so generous as to talk to me the other day about his journey to becoming the director and how he is managing through stressful situations like these.
Lee attended high school in the Canadian province of Alberta where he lived on his family farm. Growing up, he told me how he had opportunities to solve problems at his own home, “whether it was fixed machinery or whether it was to figure out how to build a treehouse with old scrap lumber, or you know, a go-kart with a shopping cart and a baby stroller.” Talking to Lee gave me some insight on how learning how to look at a problem from different angles could give insight on how to solve it differently. After he earned his Ph.D. in Parasitology, where he researched the hormonal regulation of molting in ticks, he went into biotechnology. While he admits, “I would probably suggest that what I do now has nothing to do with ticks themselves. However, obviously, it gave me a strong biochemical background. In my current job, understanding biology and chemistry is important. It gave me a strong problem solving aspect.” In other words, Lee used his experience to be able to adapt it when presented with new problems.
A common trend that Lee faced while in college to working in a company was that he always had to adapt to his surroundings. One thing that Lee has held onto is his willingness to learn. When he transitioned from research to the company, Lee saw the most change in the social aspects of work. “I guess the part that I really felt less comfortable with was the sales part of it because I would probably say that I am somewhat of an introvert. And for me it wasn't hard for me to stand in front of 1000 people and give a presentation. I've done that before from a technical perspective,” he told me, “but to stand in front of, you know, one or two people trying to sell them something that they may not fully appreciate or understand, was not was not the most enjoyable part of my initial profession.”
Gaining confidence was something that Lee had to overcome. And his advice? “Know what you're talking about,” he says. “It doesn't necessarily mean that it's not a bad thing if you're nervous.” After much practice, though, Lee was able to learn how to feel comfortable. So even when he was not assured that he could do it, the most he could do would be to learn as much as he could on what he was talking about. And that appeared again when Lee was promoted to directing manufacturing at Bio-Rad for clinical diagnostics.
“Generally, people can learn and adapt to their environments. You just have to be willing to try. And we'll need to take some advice and have some mentorship,” he says. Now, Lee is in charge of scaling up the production of testing equipment for Bio-Rad, managing the financial aspects of the business, and ensuring Bio-Rad’s factories are performing at the best of their capabilities. Lee reminds us, “Opportunities don't always come every day. You really have to know yourself. There's nothing wrong with being uncomfortable. So I took the opportunity. And in reality, people have a lot of abilities that they might not always tap into.”
And Lee has had to think fast and think slow. Meaning, Lee has had to hone in on his ability to react to high-risk issues as well as being able to deliberate on important issues that affect the company as a whole. For example, Lee compares this to the local police department that he volunteers for. “You have the detectives, you know, they're the ones that evaluate the situation; they look at all the evidence, they draw the conclusions, and they kind of put everything together,” Lee starts. “And then you have the police staff, the police officers on the street, and their objective is to respond to the calls as quickly as they can and deal with problems immediately, because sometimes you don't have more than a few minutes, or sometimes even less to make decisions.” This example is quite similar to his own job, he says, and being able to solve these different problems comes with being able to listen and learn.
Handling with manufacturing requires fast reaction and slow deliberation. Dealing with this type of limbo makes it exhilarating for Lee. “Because if a line goes down, then you might have 30 people that have nothing to do. You might have products that come out of compliance. So you might have to throw away hundreds of thousands of dollars of raw materials or products, which you might have customers that go on backorder,” he explains. And at the same time, being able to look at the overall problem itself helps Lee fix wider issues at the same time.
One example he gave me was very relevant to this time -- qPCR testing for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. While caught with the case of needing to scale testing from the tens to the millions, Lee brings up the problem: being able to support this scale of manufacturing with technology. A recent problem, Lee remarks, that he had to solve was how to supply a machine that needed more pipette tips. “This is an old robot so its pipette tips that it uses are no longer made by the company, and they're down to their last packages of tips,” he says. “They have enough to make the next lot of material for testing. But after the middle of June, they have to find a different solution.”
And so, Lee saw the bigger issue, and he asked a question -- one that sounded almost too obvious. Has anyone looked on eBay for these tips?
“No, no one has looked on eBay. So of course, I'm googling eBay,” he says. And I find, you know, a whole bunch of cartons of these tips. So as of yesterday, they've ordered them, and they have enough now to take them to the end of the year,” Lee tells me.
This is extremely interesting. Instead of having a problem that has an immediate repercussion, the team would have enough time to solve other issues at hand. And instead of stressing over the issue, Lee listened, learned about the situation, and adapted a solution. “When you're faced with something that's hard to solve, sometimes the crazy ideas are not maybe as crazy as you might think they are,” he told me. And that’s true.
Even during the current COVID-19 pandemic, Lee is hard at work looking at ways he can make sure his employees are safe and taken care of. As other products from the company are less needed than Bio-Rad’s serological and qPCR testing for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, Lee has had to consider the rapid reorganization of the company to sustain their employees.
And during this time, Lee has been using his experience as a senior worker at Bio-Rad to come up with creative ideas and make this possible. “I am more comfortable in challenging the status quo,” he tells me.
There are lots of ways to come to a solution and not every path that you take is better than any other path in many, many cases. But when I first began my career, I was more in the mindset, "Yes, I'll do whatever I'm asked to do" instead of questioning, "Well, if we did it this way, maybe it would go faster or better on paper type type aspects."
And by listening intently on what others have to say and adapting his knowledge, Lee keeps working hard to make sure Bio-Rad’s response to the current COVID-19 pandemic is as efficient as possible.
