President's Message
August, 2007
The voice of our members…
We recently completed an online survey of our members seeking opinions on the chapter’s offerings and operations. We hope you took the opportunity to participate. Roughly 30 percent of Northern Sierra’s members did. The chapter exists for the professional betterment of its members and we seek to provide programs that fit our members’ needs. Feedback is very important.
A few interesting survey outcomes:
- We asked about preferences in presentation topics for Professional Development Meetings. The top five topics selected from a menu of 20: Inventory accuracy; lean supply chain; lean manufacturing; inventory optimization techniques; and six sigma. It is interesting and significant that these are all technical topics. The most popular of the “soft” topics was performance management. We’ve responded to this input by asking Jim Tarr to share his expertise in the most popular topic, inventory accuracy, at our first PDM of the new season. Details are on this site. We are working to finalize future presentations of lean-related and six sigma material.
- Our members are very interested in the chapter’s educational offerings. Most particularly, the CPIM classes are seen as very important. We’ll be starting a new series with the Basics of Supply Chain Management beginning September 27th. We are currently planning to offer the Basics course twice per year and each of the four remaining courses annually. There is also significant interest in the Certified Supply Chain Professional (CSCP) program. There are some details to be worked out, but we hope to offer CSCP in time for the December certification exam. More to come soon.
-On the other end of the scale, the printed and mailed chapter newsletter rated low in importance. Most members receive their information through the website, the e-newsletter, or emails. The printed newsletter represents a very significant expense for the chapter and the survey indicates it is not providing much return on investment. We’ll discontinue publishing a paper newsletter on a trial basis.
More survey results in future President’s Messages….
Congratulations…
- To Jeanny Ng, the Northern Sierra Chapter’s Vice-President of Education, for successfully completing the CSCP Certification Exam. Jeanny is the third NORS member to achieve the CSCP designation.
- To Michelle Danielson, the chapter’s Past President, for being named co-recipient of the inaugural Dick Welch Volunteer of the Year Award. The award, named in honor of the late Dick Welch, a popular long-time member of region staff, is presented by Region 10 to those that exemplify the spirit of volunteerism. Michelle, and award co-recipient Merri Rich of the Salt Lake Chapter, were the extremely hard-working Co-Chairs of the recent very successful Region 7&10 Leadership Conference held in San Jose.
David Steiger, CPIM
