By Kenneth S. Moser, CNA, CNSA

The APICS Web site generates 20 to 40 electronic mail messages per day. The vast majority of these messages are in the nature of: please send me information about ... or please send me a brochure on ... A significant number of these messages, however, fall into what I call body of knowledge requests. These requests generally involve advice or information on terms, topics, concepts, vendors, products or issues that are outside my area of expertise.

To provide a better and more timely response to these requests, we generally steer them to [email protected]. To ensure that our site is meeting your needs, however, our Web support team does review these messages and maintains a number of statistics on them.

While drafting a new design for our site, we began reviewing messages from the past several months. When we examined these messages, we found something interesting: Many of you are asking questions that are addressed in some detail in this magazine. For example, over a six-month period, 26 people have asked for advice on MRP software.

If you are new to APICS, or if someone routinely borrows your magazine, you may not have the issues you need. What can you do? Well, if you like to surf, you may want to check out the publisher's site, Lionheart Publishing Inc. Online. Lionheart maintains a series of pages in support of this magazine. You can click your way to it from the Links to Other Manufacturing Sites page at APICS Online -- http://www.apics.org -- or enter the URL directly into your browser as http://207.69.204.147/APICS.shtml.

When you access this page, you will see the cover of the latest issue of APICS -- The Performance Advantage, accompanied by a menu of options. Major options include the Current Edition, Buyers Guide Online, the Online Edition Archive, Article Index, and more. Let's review these options in more detail.

When you click on the Current Edition, your browser will display a page containing the table of contents followed by a brief description of featured articles. Just under one-half of the featured articles will be available online each month. For example, the December 1996 page included links for two features, "The Art and Science of Forecasting," by Hans Levenbach, Ph.D., and "Putting Simulation to Work," by Richard Stafford.

Many regular columns are also available, including the President's Message/Guest Editorial, APICS Business Outlook Index, APICS Report, APICS Chapter Seminars, APICS Online, Software Review and more. By the way, APICS' Web site, http://www.apics.org, also includes these items from the magazine, plus items such as case studies from current and past issues and past APICS Business Outlook Index reports. This is a good way to review the latest articles if your magazine is lost or borrowed.

The Online Edition Archive works pretty much the same way, but it starts with a page listing the issues available online. All issues from December 1995 forward are currently available and Lionheart plans to maintain old issues indefinitely. As with the current edition, you will find a complete table of contents along with the full text of several articles from each issue. These articles are an excellent resource for new APICS members and others who are trying to come up to speed quickly on leading-edge issues in manufacturing.

The Buyers Guide Online allows visitors to search for firms that supply products and services in 30 different categories ranging from automatic ID to warehousing systems. Once you identify the firms that interest you, you may obtain more information on them by consulting the supplier profiles, which are also accessible here. Depending upon the information provided by the supplier, the listing will include a logo and the following:

• Company name
• Address
• Telephone number
• Fax number
• Contact name

The listing also includes a description of the products or services they provide. The 1997 Buyers Guide will be published in this month's APICS -- The Performance Advantage and also will be posted online. This information can help you locate firms that provide the products and services you need.

The Article Index lists all articles appearing in the magazine from July 1991 to July 1996 in order by subject. A top level menu of 28 subjects ranging from automatic ID/data collection to warehousing/distribution is provided to help you navigate more quickly to a particular subject. As you review listings, you may click various ordering boxes to purchase reprints, which cost $3.50 (plus shipping and handling) each. If you need to come up to speed quickly on an entire subject, you can save time and money (20 percent at the time of this writing) by purchasing all of the articles on that subject. If you're not on the Web or your browser does not support forms, you may also place orders via telephone at (800) 392-7294 or (770) 431-0867, extension 201.

Lionheart also offers numerous other miscellaneous services for APICS members which can be accessed through Lionheart's home page (http://207.69.204.147). Here you will find that Lionheart produces several other publications that serve manufacturing, including Intelligent Manufacturing. I do not endorse any products or services, but you may want to investigate subscriptions to one or both of these periodicals as well.

Lionheart is working on several enhancements to make this site even more useful to APICS members. For example, Lionheart staff is currently testing a search engine that they plan to use to create a searchable article index sometime in the first quarter of 1997. In fact, if all goes well, the searchable index may be online before this article goes to print. Later in the year, Lionheart plans to develop more robust online software surveys and survey reporting capabilities.

If you rely on APICS -- The Performance Advantage for timely information on breaking news and use the Web regularly, I urge you to bookmark the APICS and Lionheart Publishing Web sites.

Copyright © 2020 by APICS — The Educational Society for Resource Management. All rights reserved.

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