1.

Introduction
The Company
Alcon laboratories was founded in 1947 in Fort Worth, Texas by two pharmacists, William
C. Conner and Robert D. Alexander. Their goals was to provide accurate, sterile, and stable
ophthalmological drugs.
Within two decades Alcon had become an international leader in the research, development,
manufacturing and marketing of a wide range of products for the diagnosis and treatment of
ophthalmic disorder.
In 1977, Alcon was purchased by Nestle S.A., Nestle provided increased funding and gave
Alcon management mandate to increase new product development. Alcons sales tripled over the
period between 1977 and 1984.
The R&D Organisation
Alcon R&D department is the most critical part of falcons business, headed by Dr. Dilip
Raval, The purpose of the R&D department was to develop new, marketable eye care products that
would fuel the company growth.

2. Synopsis of the case

George Leone, senior vice president of Science and technology at Alcon Laboratories,
notices three important issues in managing research function. The first is how much to spend on
R&D. The second is how to allocate the resources among the various programs and projects. The
third is how to ensure that the resource are used effectively. The combinations of answer of these
three question determine how productive the research activity will be.
A Shift of emphasised to basic research. The research evolving towards larger scale, longer
term studies of more complex, sophisticated diseases of the eye. The goal is to meet the companys
aggressive growth targets, new breakthrough product were needed. The investment in basic research
were longer term and riskier. Thus Alcon required to determine an evaluation system to measure the
level of productivity of R&D department.

3. Objective of the case

Hope consultant will determine the possible problems that relate with the difficulty in
measuring the productivity. In result, we will provide recommendation to improve monitoring in
R&D productivity.

4. Problem Identification
Before hope consultant address the main problems, first we identify Alcon existing device
control. Its seems like Alcon already apply appropriate control for laboratory industry. But we figure
out that Alcon has no action tracking and monitoring on personal objective that reduce the
effectiveness of action accountability under action control.
Alcon has been doing a good practice such as consultation of all Alcon employee with their
immediate supervisor about their personal objective for the year. The personal objective had to be
written down by employee as documentation and signed by both employee and the supervisor.
However, the monitoring or follow up against those personal objectives are not done by supervisor.
Therefore the supervisor does not know whether the employees doing good effort in achieving the
objective and whether employee had achieved the objective or not. As a result, managements
maybe difficult to measuring the productivity of its employees.

5. Suggested solution
R&D department have to implement action tracking against employee personal objectives.
It will involve direct supervision and monitoring by supervisors. To be more timely, the personal
objective consultation should be held semi annually. As a purpose, it can give more accurate
reflection what employee has been doing. Direct supervisor assigned to establish an action report of
the employee. Then it will be distributed to top management. Thus top management know whether
their employee are productive or not. It would be good if the company establish a standard format
for documenting both the personal objectives and supervisor report. Thus management can provide
sufficient documents for doing internal audit.

6. Self Reflection
Rasyids self reflection

I have learned another types of control beside result control. Those are action, personnel,
and cultural control. I studied the definition of those control and each control has it forms that
specifically address managements problems. Action control has four form : behavioural constraint,
reaction review, action accountability, and redundancy. Personnel control has three forms : Selection
and placement, training , and job design and provision of necessary resources. Cultural control has
five forms : Codes of conduct, group rewards, Intra-organisational transfer, physical arrangement,
and tone of the top. I learn also the condition determining the effectiveness of action, personnel, and
cultural controls.
To obtain those knowledge I use reading skill. It is help me to understand any gathered
information both from the text book and digital resource such article in the internet, especially I
gathered any information that useful to settle the study case.
So far PBL process has been help me in developing the professional skill. I have improved
my reading skill. Improved reading skill has increase my motivation to gain a knowledge. It is not
affect only interest in MCS course but also affect my interest on reading outside the MCS. Again its
very helpful for me.
In the next future probably I want to improve my writing skill. So that, my group can
improve the report assignment grade. I have found myself have responsibility to the group because
Im a senior. I want to keep learning to help my group get a good grades.