December 1996 € Volume 6 € Number 12

What a Show!

From the magazine's perspective, APICS '96 was a tremendous success. Hundreds of APICS members stopped by the APICS-The Performance Advantage booth to say hello, to pitch story ideas and to critique our performance. Old friends dropped in to offer their opinions on the magazine's content and appearance. And I met many of the magazine's contributors with whom I'd only spoken on the phone or exchanged e-mail before. That face-to-face interaction with readers and writers-open and honest-is the best way to gauge our performance. We returned home with aching feet and swollen egos.

Elsewhere in this issue of the magazine, in the APICS Report and in the article by Steve Melnyk that begins on page 32, you'll read that APICS '96 broke records for attendance, for exhibitor participation and for exhibition size. It's no wonder. Resource management professionals are looking toward technology tools to provide them a competitive advantage. For them, the APICS exhibition is both a computer science lesson and a shopping mall-jam packed with new technologies, innovative applications and real-world solutions. And the vendors recognize the annual APICS exhibition as a keystone to their marketing strategies. Nowhere else can they find so heavy a concentration of knowledgeable users with well-defined needs and the desire to buy. And the show's reputation is growing.

The bottom line is that now is a good time to be in the resource management software business-manufacturers facing cutthroat competition from domestic and global competitors are being forced to invest in high tech solutions. The good news for manufacturers is that these solutions are growing more robust and integrating new systems is becoming easier, thanks to both object-oriented software technology and the growing number of alliances being forged by ERP vendors and best-of-breed solution providers.

The vendors certainly felt a positive vibe on the show floor. The APICS members shopping for the ideal solution may have felt for the first time that it might be available . . . if not right now, then not too far into the future.


You don't say
There persists, however, a gap between what computer technology can do for a manufacturing enterprise and how well a manufacturing enterprise can implement that technology.

During APICS '96, Associate Editor David Greenfield and I represented the magazine for a couple of roundtable discussions-one on supply chain management (which we will condense for publication in January) and one on enterprise resource planning software (you can read that write-up in February). In the ERP discussion, users complained that vendors add bells-and-whistles "functionality" to the software that does little to improve efficiency and operations. Vendor representatives pointed out that software alone cannot help a company if the company's processes are out of whack.

And you know, you can't argue with that. That's why now is a good time to be a member of APICS.

-Gregory A. Farley, Editor

Correction: The biographical information for Blair Williams, CPIM, ("Leveraging Information Systems for Enhanced Productivity") was omitted from the October issue. He is the materials management and manufacturing engineering manager at AT&T's manufacturing facility in Clark, N.J. We apologize for the error.