January 1996 € Volume 6 € No. 1
1995 APICS CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION WRAP-UP
1995 APICS International Conference
& Exhibition Report
Of Mice and Men and Resource Management
By Dave Turbide
Once again, the usual activities of the fall season included the annual
APICS International Con- ference, held in Orlando, Fla., at the Orange County
Convention Center. During the third week of October, more than 5,400 conference
attendees ignored the warm Florida sunshine outside in favor of an unmatched
slate of presentations, keynote addresses and trade show exhibits inside
under the theme "Imagineering the Future." While not actually
on Disney property, the presence of the mouse was strongly felt from the
Disney-coined word in the conference theme through the special Disney Imagineering
sessions and behind-the-scenes tours on the final day of the conference.
Keynote speakers
On each of the four main days of the conference, a keynote speaker addressed
the assembled attendees on topics of general interest to the community.
On Monday, former Apple Computer CEO John Sculley shared his experiences
and insights into the challenges facing manufacturing in the coming years.
With the technology changes and increased global competition, there will
be a great need for both new and better management tools (focused more on
the customer, not just the manufacturing process itself). And an educated
work force is key to future success.
On Tuesday, astronaut John Young, who has more space flight experience than
just about anyone and is one of only 12 humans ever to have walked on the
moon, entertained the audience with inside information about NASA and its
tremendous achievements. During the afternoon, Young and industry representatives
exchanged valuable information and answered questions during a panel discussion
concerning manufacturing for the Aerospace and Defense sector. A&D; is a
particularly challenging arena at this time due to government cut-backs,
a new emphasis on streamlining the procurement process, and a trend toward
privatizing what are currently government-provided services.
Wednesday's speaker, Susan O'Malley, garnered enthusiastic praise as a dynamic,
interesting and informative presenter. O'Malley is the president of the
Washington Bullets and the first woman to hold such a post with a National
Basketball Association franchise. While her background and achievements
are primarily in the marketing arena, she offered enjoyable and pertinent
observations on motivation, teamwork and achievement that can be of benefit
to anyone at any level or specialty within the organization.
The fourth keynote speaker was Fred Smith, chairman, president, and CEO
of Federal Express. Since its founding in 1971, Federal Express has been
a leader in defining new markets, setting the standard for quality and reliability
and beating the competition. Smith shared his experiences and told the Federal
Express story as only he can, from his viewpoint as the driving force behind
this much-admired market leader.
Sessions
APICS is an educational organization, and the annual conference reflects
that focus by featuring an impressive array of break-out sessions, organized
into 12 parallel topic areas or tracks. Each day, there were up to four
presentations in the tracks: Imagineering, Manufacturing/Service Essentials,
Employee Participation and Development, Strategic and Tactical Planning,
Quick Response, Active Leadership, Integrated Resource Management, Management
by Fact, Voice of the Customer, Continuous Improvement for Manufacturing
and Service, and Partnership Development. The more than 200 hours of educational
sessions at this year's conference emphasized new ideas, advanced skills
and case studies.
Imagineering is defined by APICS this way: "The integration of ideas
and technology to create powerful tools that increase productivity and competitiveness,
decrease down-time, and reduce waste. Imagineering shapes an environment
that allows employees to unleash their creativity to solve critical business
problems. Imagineering challenges you to create new technologies and apply
them in innovative ways never thought possible. Imagineering is power."
All of those objectives are completely in line with everything APICS members
are trying to do every day. The unique twist is the focus on creativity
and imagination. Several presentations in the "Imagineering" track
addressed the challenge of stimulating creativity and imagination. In the
session titled "Creating Imagineering Employees," for example,
the speakers discussed many ways that employees can be encouraged to not
only be more creative, but to become more involved in finding better ways
to do things. This talk also pointed out the many ways that the company
benefits as a result.
The imagineering theme was felt even in the traditional "basics"
tracks of the program In "Globalization Imagineering," Robert
Whitney and Bud Lafferty related the story of a large multinational-national
conglomerate that restructured itself into a more cohesive, focused organization,
fulfilling management's vision of a more competitive, more profitable enterprise.
In a reversal of the theme, Tom Ribar addressed the inventory accuracy issue
by stating that we typically imagine accuracy that does not exist in reality.
His presentation was entitled "Trying to Imagineer the Future? Don't
Just Imagine Inventory Accuracy." His nine-step methodology is guaranteed
to produce results.
Among the "hottest" topics today is the effort to extend control
and information exchange throughout the supply chain. Several tracks were
devoted to supply chain issues including "Quick Response," Voice
of the Customer," "Partnership Development," and "Integrated
Resource Management." Selected presentations included tips on building
stable customer relationships, discussions of demand management and forecasting,
continuous replenishment in the food industry, several cycle time reduction
sessions, electronic data interchange, schedule sharing, managing the customer-supplier
relationship, and various partnership arrangements with suppliers and customers.
The most popular sessions came under the heading of "New Concepts"
with more than 400 attendees at "Change Your Performance Measurements
or There May Be No Future" and "Reengineering the Materials Organization-A
Case Study." Also with more than 400 listeners was "Six Ways to
Reduce Inventory" presented by Terry Lunn. This session got the highest
ratings of the 43 presentations in the "Case Study" group. Top
presentation honors also went to Hal Mather for "Product Variety: Friend
or Foe?" as best presentation in "New Concepts"; Robert Stahl
in the Basic Concepts category for "Sales and Operations Planning:
A Concept That Still Works"; Martin Ramsay for his workshop "Achieving
Integrity of Purpose: Using Experiential Learning to Align Vision, Systems
and People"; and Bob Abair (Advanced Skills) for "Agile Manufacturing:
This Is Not Just a Repackaging of Material Requirements Planning and Just-in-Time."
Finally, all day Friday was dedicated to a presentation from the Disney
company on how imagineering works at the place where it was invented. Three
seminar sessions addressed management service and Disney-style creativity,
and provided insight into the magic behind the magic. The first topic focused
on the personnel aspect of the Disney "product." So much of the
Disney experience is the direct result of the pride and commitment of Disney
"cast members" (employees) that this facet of the business is
extremely important to their success. The second session reinforced the
first by showing how highly motivated people deliver quality service to
Disney park guests through understanding customer expectations, planning,
training and sound management. The third session placed the first two in
context by looking at the company mission and strategy and how all of the
elements are brought together.
As a special treat, a "behind the scenes" tour was available on
Friday afternoon. Buses transported APICS members to the "factory"
behind the resort to see how utilities, waste removal and recovery (reuse,
recycling), the back-stage production facilities, and other aspects of the
park operate in support of the unique Disney experience. It was a day to
remember for the many conference attendees who participated in this unique
experience.
Certification
For conference attendees who are not yet certified but would like to be,
the annual conference offers a once-a-year opportunity to study certification
subjects and test their knowledge through computer-based testing (CBT).
Sunday through Wednesday, full-day certification tutorials were offered
in both CPIM and CIRM exam areas at the Peabody Hotel, located across from
the convention center. In addition, an APICS/ETS testing center was available
on-site for CPIM exams. Initiated about one year ago, computer-based testing
(CBT) for CPIM has been very well received. First, it offers more flexibility
in scheduling the exams, which were previously available only three times
per year and limited to two exams per test date. With CBT, exams can be
scheduled to better fit individual schedules.
Under the old pencil-and-paper format, the candidate had to wait weeks for
test results to come in the mail. With CBT, the results are available on-the-spot
and CBT delivers improved diagnostics for those with topic areas that need
more study.
APICS also provided an information booth in the convention center lobby
to handle any certification questions. CBT demonstration terminals were
available at the information booth throughout the conference.
Exhibits
More than 160 companies participated in the exhibition portion of the conference,
filling the exhibit hall with displays of systems and software, bar-codes
and books, magazines and MES solutions, classes and CAD software, schedulers
and simulations, training and technology, and much more. A highlight was
the "Agile Enterprise in Action" booth, operated by Textile/Clothing
Technology Corporation (TC2) that manufactured golf shirts to-order. Customer
orders were entered at an interactive terminal which passed the data to
an automated cutter. The cut parts were then sewn by flexible cross-trained
teams in a modular environment and the monogrammed shirt was delivered to
the customer within hours of placing the order. In conjunction with this
display, an "Agility Forum" offered presentations on flexible
manufacturing, simulation-based scheduling, employee involvement, interactive
education delivery systems, and consumer-driven agility. A number of exhibitors
were displaying scheduling solutions-as part of an integrated package or
as a separate product that could be interfaced to an MRP II or ERP system.
Some significant advancements have been made in the scheduling arena recently,
and the array of products on display offered proof of these developments.
Finite scheduling systems for the plant floor have been around for a number
of years (and they are still gathering considerable interest at conference
trade shows) but the real news is in the extension of finite logic to planning.
The new offerings apply optimization logic to the master scheduling process,
material planning and distribution planning processes.
Another ripe market is the make-to-order/assemble-to-order/engineer-to-order
community which is served with configurators and systems designed around
configuration front-end processors. Again, the suppliers with self-contained
configurators typically offer interfaces to the more widely used MRP II
systems or have established partnerships with selected system vendors.
More software suppliers are touting solutions for "mixed-mode"
manufacturing which vendors variously define as either a mix of discrete
and process or a mix of batch and repetitive (flow) processing. And, as
in the displays of the last few years, the terms "open systems"
and "client/server" appear nearly everywhere.
Another focal point for software suppliers is the mid-sized manufacturing
company. Until recently, nearly everyone seemed to be targeting the large
multinationals-nationals. Today, however, there are several vendors trying
to move up from the low end and several moving down from the Fortune 500
to the smaller-company market. In addition, several vendors remain focused
on this mid-sized group where they had been successful before. Mid-sized
is usually defined as somewhere between $50 million and about $150-200 million
in sales. This brings up the whole issue of scalability. Some vendors have
claimed a wide range of capabilities and prices within the same system (to
reach a wide range of prospective customers) but there has been limited
evidence of success with the same package in, say, a billion-dollar multinational-national
and a local machine shop. As vendors try to downsize the larger packages,
it will be interesting to see how they can offer comprehensive functionality
at an affordable price to the smaller customer while maintaining the heretofore
high prices that the big customers have been willing to pay thus far.
The exhibit area of the annual APICS conference is probably the best opportunity
there is to survey the market, see what new techniques and capabilities
the vendors are emphasizing, and learn about new products and new players.
The exhibitors are also significant contributors to the financial viability
of the annual conference through exhibit space rental fees and sponsored
events (Computer Associates sponsored the Monday keynote address. SAP, New
Resources Corp., Berclain, JBA, J.D. Edwards, Thru-Put Technologies, and
The Agility Forum also contributed as "Partners in Promotion.")
Conference lunches were served in the exhibit area to encourage conference
attendees to visit the vendor booths. Also, a Monday evening reception (with
music and snacks) and raffle give-aways made exhibit area visits even more
attractive.
In summary, the 1995 International Conference was not only fun and enlightening,
it was also a great opportunity to meet other practitioners who often are
faced with some of the same challenges and opportunities as we are. I know
that I am looking forward to the 1996 conference, scheduled for Oct. 13-17,
1996, in New Orleans.
Dave Turbide, CFPIM, CMfgE, CIRM, is founder and
president of Production Solutions, Inc., a manufacturing management consulting
firm based in Beverly, Mass.
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