I'd like to direct this column to the younger readers (as opposed to people like myself who've been around forever), and ask the question posed in the headline: Who is your customer? Now before you answer, let me point out that I'm not talking about your company's customers. Rather, who or what — in a business context — is your personal customer? One more clue: I'm not looking for your internal customers, who are perhaps Ellen and Pete in the department down the hall.

Give up? Your personal customer is, I submit, your employer. You are selling a product — your time, your skills, your energy — to that customer in return for compensation, both monetary and, hopefully, otherwise. Now the next question: When's the last time you sat down and asked yourself what you might do to provide superior service to this very important customer?

When I was young, we didn't worry about this issue. That was back in the 1960s when times were good, and the U.S. was still basking in the post-World War II afterglow. The phrase "hog heaven" comes to mind. And we pretty much felt the good times would go on forever. Well, they didn't, and we learned the hard way that good economic times may or may not be with us in the future. No guarantees.

In a similar vein, one's relationship with his or her employer is less certain today. The kind of job I had with General Motors 30 years ago was perhaps the nearest thing this country's ever seen to guaranteed annual employment. But not any more. Not since we've been delayered, downsized, rightsized and reengineered until we're blue in the face. Not since jobs, which once seemingly guaranteed lifetime employment, were eliminated by the hundreds of thousands.

It's different now. Today, one's career identity and, perhaps more important, one's economic security, come not so much from the company he or she works for but rather from one's own personal "franchise." I'm referring to the collective set of skills you're able to provide to a current, or prospective, employer. You need a set of tools in your personal tool kit which make you valuable, and that set of tools should be balanced. Just as a mechanic's tool kit contains not only wrenches but also screwdrivers and gauges, one's personal set of skills should contain more than technical capabilities. Saying it another way, and this may sound sacrilegious, APICS certification is not the total answer. It's very important — but not sufficient of and by itself.

One of the true professionals in our field is a gentleman named Arvil Sexton. Over the years, he has contributed enormous amounts of time to APICS in activities such as heading up the APICS E&R Foundation, teaching CPIM certification classes, founding the Northern Kentucky APICS chapter, and most recently being tapped to head up the 1998 International Conference in Nashville, Tenn. Arvil and I visited recently, and our conversation went something like this:

TW: So Arvil, what's going to be new and exciting this year in Nashville?

Arvil: Tom, in designing the program for the 1998 conference, we looked at what one might call the supply chain. We asked "who are our customers' customers?" We concluded that our customers — the people attending the conference — had as their customers the companies they work for.

TW: That makes sense. So where did that take you?

Arvil: It got a lot simpler. We've been able to focus on what we should provide to the attendees so they could do a better job of serving their customers, of adding value to their employers.

TW: Sounds like a win-win.

Arvil: Yeah, We're trying to be a bit creative. The result is that maybe half of the sessions in Nashville next year will be "out of the box," i.e., outside of the traditional topics for an APICS international conference.

For example, we'll have a number of sessions on people skills. This gets us into areas like cross-functional teaming, virtual organizations, problem-solving, and the like. Another potential flight is in the area of managing change — how to negotiate and navigate one's way through the enormous changes that are necessary for most organizations if they're going to be competitive in the year 2000.

TW: Excellent. What else are you folks working on?

Arvil: We feel that another topic of great importance to the attendees — and their customers — is information technology. It's hard to argue with the notion that IT skills and a good knowledge base are essential for practitioners in our field. We envision topics covering the Internet, bar coding, electronic data interchange, software selection, managing major systems implementation projects, etc. Just as with people systems and change management, we believe that familiarity and comfort with the IT world is an essential element in the practitioner's tool kit.

TW: Absolutely. But, Arvil, what about the people with high technical knowledge but lacking in the ability to communicate? You and I both know dozens of APICS people — certified, deep technical knowledge, good experience background, high native intelligence — whose careers have foundered due to problems with fundamental person-to-person communications or other basics of human behavior.

Arvil: You bet. We envision an entire flight on what we're calling Business Survival Skills. This would include topics on interpersonal skills: How to communicate, how to facilitate, how to motivate. Here we'd also like to cover subjects like career strategies, networking skills, time management and — are you ready? — stress management.

TW: As one who's practiced stress management techniques for over two decades, I'll be glad to give a testimonial to the value of that. Things are a lot different today, Arvil, than when you and I were young. Today it's likely that both spouses in a family are employed full time. They have kids. They're active in their community and/or their church. At work, they're in a high-speed loop that includes FedEx, faxes, e-mail and the Internet. Many have co-workers in Europe or Asia, which can mean conference calls at odd hours. The pace of business and its time pressures are far, far higher than just a dozen years ago. It's a whole new ball game. And all of these factors create stress and that needs to be dealt with effectively, or bad things can start to happen — both physically and emotionally. But what about the topics "inside the box"? Will you be doing them justice?

Arvil: Definitely. First of all, we're going to have a strong focus on supply chain management. This is an area of extreme interest today, and we plan to meet that need fully. We'll also have in-depth coverage on enterprise resource planning/manufacturing resource planning, Just-in-Time and total quality. We'll devote a substantial number of sessions to P&IM basics, the fundamental APICS body of knowledge. We also envision flights on customer-driven strategies and global/international issues.

TW: It sounds super, very solid.

Arvil: Thanks, Tom. Let me put in just one more plug. The 1998 conference is going to be in Nashville. That makes me feel good because Tennessee's my home state, but what really matters is that Nashville is a great, great city. It's clean; it's safe; the people are friendly; and of course, the music is just wonderful.

TW: I'm sold. And you readers may want to target a bit of the travel and training money in your budget for the Nashville conference on Nov. 1-4. You'll benefit, and so will all your customers — the external ones (the customers who pay the bills), the internal customers (your co-workers), and the company itself. That spells win-win-win-win.

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