PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE
State of the Chapter Address

JUNE 2007

Rick Hollingsworth, CPIM, CSCP

As I complete my tenure as Chapter President, I look back at those things that made the Chapter strong this past year.

In the 2006-2007 year the Florida West Coast Chapter of APICS saw both disappointment and promise as we took on bold initiatives to grow the chapter and increase community awareness. The Board of Directors (BOD) remained relatively stable and new talent shows promise of a strong future for the chapter. Minor changes occurred through the year with the acquisition of John Foster as VP of Finance and Dave Newman as VP of Marketing. Craig Williams departed in April for work in North Carolina. Linda Hermann has picked up where he left off and is actively planning next year's programs schedule. All Board positions are currently filled for the 2007-2008 year with additional Director's positions representing a "Deep Bench" for future development of the board.

Education

This year's education program continues to turn out CPIMs. Due to the disproportionately high number of certified professionals in our chapter (106 people representing 38%), we were content with the number of attendees to our classes for such a mature product. 9 CPIM review classes were held with a total of 51 individuals currently pursuing CPIM. Two new CPIMs were added this year. The new CSCP certification was launched in 2006. The program has been slow to generate great interest, but our chapter continues to been an exciting addition to our educational portfolio. Since then 10 chapter members (4%) have successfully achieved this certification. Jerry Kilty has developed a training curriculum and held one course in 2006.

The following members achieved their CPIM certification during the 2006/2007 year:

Jason Frederickson, CPIM
David Sherrell, CPIM

The following members achieved their CPIM certification during the 2006/2007 year:

Rick Kramer, CPIM CIRM CSCP
Ronna Ryman, CPIM CSCP
Haroon Abbu, CSCP
Linda Hermann, CPM CSCP
Matter Kane, CSCP
Harold Tarbuck, CPIM CSCP

Membership

Membership remained relatively flat with a nominal (<2%) drop in numbers. An additional 7 members will be added upon completion of paperwork as a part of our seminar promotion. These membership levels have been seen throughout the society.

177 Professional
74 Corporate
2 Student
404 Corp. Associate

Marketing

Time will tell if our marketing initiative has been beneficial to the chapter. While it drew down our resources in the short term the board felt that it was the right endeavor for the good of the chapter. Indicators of our return on investment will include membership increases, educational opportunities realized and PDM attendance. While we should be on track for another Platinum year, next year's status should be even easier to obtain with the groundwork we laid down this year.

The award for Member of the Year was presented to James Moore, PMP, of CardioCommand for his demonstration of continued education through seminars and classes. James has been active in promoting the APICS Body of Knowledge since becoming a member in 2005. His dedication to our chapter, community and company

The Company of the Year was presented to CardioCommand, Inc. They were the most receptive and accommodating in actively promoting education and certifications training sessions for their employees.

The chapter's newsletter is still delivered electronically. Our members who responded to our survey prefer this method of delivery as well as using the Web site apics-flwc.org for local APICS news. Our Webmaster, Keith Chaisson, continues to add dazzle to the site and has included on line surveys and ballots as innovative solutions to data collections.

Companies continue to turn to our chapter to post and fill positions in Operations Management. Our Career Services function is the first step for most of our members to find employment. In general, unemployment remains low in our profession so interest in this area is sporadic. Our web site provides much self-help information to our members who are looking for work.

Programs

Program topics included Lean, Six Sigma, and Supply Chain Management. We also continued our partnership with the Florida Gulf Coast Chapter of APICS to share speakers. This cut our travel expenses incurred by the speaker. We initiated a seminar opportunity for our speakers this year. This gave the speaker a chance to give a seminar the day of our Professional Development Meeting. Attendance was low due to limited marketing resources and averaged under 15 attendees per seminar. We conduct nine Professional Development Programs (PDP's) and schedule most of next year's speakers. We also held one joint meeting with ASQ (hosted by us).

Respectfully submitted,
Rick Hollingsworth
President
Florida West Coast Chapter
APICS