The oft repeated mantra of resource management organizations worldwide — customer service, customer service, customer service — has grown to a near deafening level these past few years. And for good reason. Competition is too fierce, too widespread and too mobile to be ignored. Thus, keeping long-held customers in the fold is every bit as important as garnering new ones. And it all boils down to one factor — you guessed it, customer service.

With everyone in the company in synch with a utopian vision of ideal customer service, what do you do to truly facilitate the achievement of this goal? How do you bring customers more closely into the production of the goods they order? You configure them into your process, of course.

Like all other desires of the business world, software manufacturers have risen to the challenge of bringing the vision of customer-configured orders to reality. And that is the angle we investigate in this month's feature focus on configurators. First, Dick Bourke of Industry Directions provides a sweeping overview of the configurator marketplace. He not only details how the market arrived at its current sought-after position, but offers his take on where he thinks it's all headed. Next, Bruce Crocco of Symix and Munira Fareed of Trilogy examine how a configuration system lessens employee training costs and eliminates order mistakes and reworks by streamlining the sales and order process. The pair look not only at the history and future of configurator software, but also delve into its applications in assemble-to-stock, assemble-to-order and engineer-to-order environments.

Other Issues Covered
As a lead-in to the June issue's focus on enterprise resource planning, Duncan Smith of Teklogix looks at the crucial role middleware plays in facilitating the interaction between data collection and ERP systems. Smith offers guidelines on the important capabilities to seek out when creating a data collection infrastructure to boost ERP functionality.

And in keeping with our continued focus on management issues, Jamshed Rivetna explores the importance of using an operations strategy checklist (page 46 of the print edition). According to Rivetna, "As a company grows, or as its business environment changes, it is faced with many strategic decisions which may appear to be of little consequence. But it is important to realize that these decisions, as well as any procedure or policy change, can have a substantial impact on a company's operational effectiveness and long-term strategic direction."

Yet More Configuration ...
In our continuing effort to provide APICS — The Performance Advantage readers the best possible information and insight into the variety of resources available to them, we have re-established the book review column under the more-than-capable guidance of Karl Kapp, Ed.D., CFPIM, CIRM, assistant professor at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania.

For his first column, Karl has chosen to review "The Circle of Innovation: You Can't Shrink Your Way to Greatness," by Tom Peters. As anyone who attended his presentation at the APICS International Conference and Exhibition last fall will attest, Tom Peters is never short on opinions, or keen insight into the workings of the business world.

I'm sure you'll appreciate Karl's treatment of Peters' book with his apt descriptions of Peters' style and highlights of the integral issues raised in "The Circle of Innovation."

Enjoy the issue!

David Greenfield, editor

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