If you are like me, looking into a student organization is always sketchy.  You’re wondering what types of people are in it, what you have to do to still be considered a member, but mostly how much of my time is this going to take and what am I going to get out of it.

I can say with 100% certainty that APICS is an excellent organization and I would not be nearly as connected without it.  For starters, I am doing this blog, this is my second semester in the organization!  Odds are if I rally a bit I will be an officer for the fall semester here too.  This is promotion in an internationally recognized organization which looks superb on a resume.

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On February 19-20 APICS hosted a case competition near Chicago, Illinois. This was a phenomenal experience, as I learned a great amount about the APICS community, did some excellent networking and had a TON of fun doing it. A case competition for APICS consists of a group of professionals come up with a scenario and teams of up to eight find solutions to it. This year’s competition was based heavily on the Theory of Constraints, which if you read The Goal; you were very well prepared for.

It starts by you checking into your hotel, this year was a Double Tree, and get situated into your room. After that it is strictly professional, as you are required to wear at least business casual at all times. You then attend a roughly 2 hour meeting which consists of a discussion of what chapters are doing well and poorly, and how to fix the issued faced. There were teams from as far away as Houston, Texas!!!  Also at the end they give you the case, roughly 9PM. After that it is time for food. Here is where I thought there was an extreme bottleneck and should probably be looked at in the future. They had food in 2 rooms for about 120 people and they have you enter and exit in the same door. Now as far as streamlining goes, this was silly as you are trying to over utilize an area that was designed for one person at a time, and if a line formed, people were nearly trapped inside.

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It’s Monday morning again! It seems like it is always Monday morning for me! It’s been awhile since I have given you guys anything to read from me. I apologize. If it’s any consolation, I have been super busy with applying to graduate schools and also passing one of the modules of the CPIM (two down, three more to go)! I am also currently taking a course (Execution and Control of Operations) in order to pass the third module. My plan is to complete the CPIM by next December. I’m trying to be realistic with my timeline as I will be taking MBA courses as well next year!

My company has been going through many organizational changes these past few months. It’s exciting for me to be a part of all this change. It’s also interesting to witness first hand how others within my organization are “handling change.” The generational gap between some employees is significant. Experiencing first hand what textbooks on organizational behavior speak about is enlightening. It is almost as if I am in the middle of a lesson from a college course on Fundamentals of Organizational Behavior.

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The fall is an exciting and busy time of the year! The kids go back to school and start getting into their own busy schedules, professional clubs start to meet again, and the holidays loom right around the corner! We sometimes don’t know if we’re coming or going! Speaking of new fall schedules, APICS Rochester had its first board meeting of the year this evening!

The meeting was in full attendance and the energy and enthusiasm for an anticipated successful year ahead was apparent! We even had two student members from the SUNY Geneseo chapter attend the meeting tonight. They too were just getting into the swing of returning to school and recruiting new APICS student members for their chapter.  

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I invited 4 of my co-workers to join me on the Sierra Nevada Sustainability plant tour hosted by Tim Kott of the APICS Sacramento Chapter. My company builds water treatment plants all over California and have heard of Sierra Nevada for many years about their fuel cells and all their green projects that’s going on.

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Currently, I’m putting a lot of energy into recruiting individuals in my local community to enroll in CPIM courses offered by APICS Rochester. Traditionally, APICS elicits a manufacturing based group of professionals. Originally founded in 1957 as The American Production and Inventory Control Society, APICS was “dedicated to raising the educational level and, therefore, the business stature of production and inventory management practitioners (Paul F. Bacigalupo, The Evolution of APICS Education).” These main practitioners were in the field of manufacturing. Although APICS has since changed its name (The Association for Operations Management) to envelop a wider base of professionals, the old mentality still exists today.  During the founding decade of APICS, 1/3 of the American workforce had jobs in factories. Today, only 1/10 of the workforce is employed in the manufacturing sector. Rochester is no exception to this declining statistic. It’s difficult to recruit individuals in the area, simply because there is a declining pool to recruit from.  I’m trying to get the message out there that all industries can benefit from an APICS education.

Being in a service industry myself, I can recognize the benefit that a CPIM or CSCP designation can reap. I just finished the Detailed Scheduling and Planning (DSP) module of the CPIM and I am going to schedule the test in the next few weeks. Unlike the Basics (BSM) module, which I elected to self-study, I chose to enroll in the DSP course offered by the local Rochester chapter. Six of us met every other week this summer until all nine chapters were understood. Whenever the class had discussions on specific topics in the book, the group was interested in hearing “the way I do it in a service environment.” I was able to learn from their experiences, too. It was a win-win situation for all involved.

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Tuesday September 8^th2009 was the first Clarkson University Chapter APICS meeting.  Discussions in this meeting included future events and what the members would like to see happen with the chapter.  We talked about the international conference in Toronto, where a lot of the students were interested in going, and were wondering about funding from the school.

We had a guest speaker lined up to talk about the importance of networking, but sadly she did not show up.  I was prepared with a backup plan.  We had a hands-on activity about manufacturing, communication and preparation. Groups were formed, blindfolds were given out and a set of Leggos were given to each group.  Two people in the group were blindfolded. These people were the only ones who could touch the leggo pieces.  Then there was a leader who had to explain to them how to put the pieces together to create the object.  The first time around it was almost impossible.

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