How Understand the Way APICS Sells Illusion

ByShaun Snapp

Executive Summary

  • APICS’ has shown a distinct distaste for reality and provides inaccurate information to decision-makers and worker bees.
  • We cover the problems with APICS.

APICS would like you to think of the perfect world before contemplating supply chain management.

APICS’ Distaste for Reality

Some people have a distaste for reality. Most of us prefer how we wish it were over how it is; however, once an individual or institution beings to state that their fantasy equals reality, the problems begin.

A Short History of APICS

APICS was founded in 1957 and had over 40,000 members. They are most famous for their certifications, called the CPIM and CSCP. Another thing APICS is known for is the APICS dictionary, which you can buy from their website.

It is also offered online if you are a member, which costs around $200 per year. This is unfortunate because we wanted to include some of the Dictionary definitions for some terms to demonstrate how loony APICS is. The costs of membership and books and courses and conferences can be expensive, and they mostly get expensed to the company. However, the value provided by APICS is not only questionable but the organization’s doctrinal approach. We might even say extremist views to how supply chains are “supposed” to operate, which we would argue is a net negative.

How Does APICS Help?

APICS promotes a perfect world where all information is correctly shared and where inventories perfectly adjust, managed by planners and operations workers who must be by definition perfect. APICS is undoubtedly not the only one. Some authors treat executives to fantasy over reality. One of the textbook cases of this is “Zero Inventories,” which came out during the JIT craze.

An inventory book begins by admitting that zero stocks are not possible but merely a concept. Does this sound dishonest to anyone but us? We have sat with inventory planners with this book reading it aloud and laughing. What is not funny is that it sits on some executives’ bookshelves.

APICS and Decision Makers

One of the biggest concerns we have with APICS is how it seems to hypnotize executives with promises of perfection that are not attainable for 95% of the companies. Much of what APICS would be possible if the following were not true:

  • Companies invested in operations
  • Companies placed operations on the same plane as marketing
  • Some of the money from executives was distributed to people working in operations
  • Humans were not political
  • If suppliers were treated nicely and fairly
  • If companies invested in sufficient training
  • etc..

Since these preconditions are not the business case, the type of excellence promoted by APICS is essentially a fantasy. APICS takes the easy way out, promising the moon, without emphasizing the investment and necessary preconditions to make the pie in the sky happen, and thinking that it is all a function of “education,” defined as reading their books and taking their certification exams. I took the exams and felt that scoring well on them had more to do with agreeing with APICS’ fantasy-based assumptions than doing any thinking.

After 13 years of more work experience, the tests seem to have been penned by someone who has never worked in the supply chain. It’s tough to understand what the point is of an educational curriculum that teaches what supply chain and production, and inventory management would look like in a perfect state.

Reference

While researching innovation, we found this interesting excerpt from the book The Break Through Illusion. We felt it reinforced what we learned from our experience with APICS.

“On yet another front corporations tried to make R&D more efficient by subjecting it to a battery of new scientific management techniques, or “management science,” as it was called in the parlance of the day. Management systems like the Critical Path Method (CPM) and Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT), originally developed for the Pentagon and NASA, were deployed to move projects through the pipeline more quickly But such solutions could not work. The new “scientific” models merely formalized and ratified the assembly-line model when what was needed was a complete break with it.”  The Break Through Illusion, Richard Florida and Martin Kenney, Basic Books, 1990