President's Message
November 1, 2009
GREETINGS MEMBERS!
Here we are starting November, and around the corner very soon will arrive a new year! It’s likely there are some who are eager or committed to take on new challenges during 2010, i.e. perhaps sign up for CPIM classes or tackle the certification tests, if you haven’t already. Northern Sierra Chapter of APICS is here to serve you, and make those challenges easier if we can.
First, this month I would like to report on my experience in early October at the APICS International Conference held in Toronto, Canada. With the theme “Global Ability” as the highlight, it was definitely apropos to be in this great multi-cultural city, joining approximately 1,000 other participants for four days, soaking in presentations such as “World-Class Small and Midsized Business Supply Chains”, “If You Want To Be Lean, Control Variability”, “Aligning Key Business Initiatives in a Difficult Economy”, “Green Opportunities in Information Technology”, “Women in Operations Panel Discussion”, “Sustainability, Frito Lay’s Supply Chain, and You”, and others from a host of 50 more choices.
Listening to questions asked during the presentations was as informative as the session themselves. And I enjoyed the background stories related by professionals from Canada, Italy, China, India, Poland, Mexico, and Africa at the second morning’s General Session. Fun times, relevant content, good contacts and suggestions from other chapter’s board members.
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Switching subjects, now let’s take a look at a present-day hot topic, The Ease of Doing Business (EODB), which has as its objective: “Provide objective measures of business regulations and their enforcement”. This index from The World Bank Group is calculated as a ranking of ten indicators, and comes from a survey of 183 countries, or economies, for the 2010 ranking. Listed below are the ten indicators, and the link to the actual ranking:
• Starting a business
• Dealing with construction permits/licenses
• Employing workers
• Registering property
• Getting credit
• Protecting investors
• Paying taxes
• Trading across borders
• Enforcing contracts
• Closing a business
http://www.doingbusiness.org/economyrankings/
Some may be wondering what this has to do with our local APICS chapter here in Northern Nevada? Maybe it isn’t relevant right now if your company has no contact internationally, but it may come in handy in the future. Even if it just sparks thought and raises questions about doing business.
And according to Christina Sullivan who blogs for HP, it is related to the customer experience. She says in her blog published 07-01-2009, “I’ve been toying with the idea for quite a while to develop an assessment that companies can use to evaluate how easy they are to do business with at a more detailed level and from a customer’s experience.”
From my perspective as a board member, I bring up the subject of “ease” because we are here to provide support and assistance to you, our members/customers. We want to know if there is any way we can help you, or if you have interest in any topics that aren’t on our calendar of events.
Hope you enjoy the onset of winter!
Linda McNeil, CPIM President