Is the CPIM program right for you?

Resilience and agility are what make supply chains thrive. By earning the APICS Certified in Planning and Inventory Management (CPIM) designation, you’ll develop competencies to successfully work across all supply chain functions. In addition, you’ll have the knowledge to manage risks and disruptions effectively and leverage technology to streamline processes. The course begins with broad, long-term strategic planning and shows how operations managers implement strategies and plans at more detailed levels and make decisions that have real-time effects.

If you have any of these responsibilities, consider pursuing the CPIM:

·      Work with an ERP system, either as an IT professionals or system user

·      Work with other manufacturing systems and technologies

·      Planning, at any level of the planning hierarchy

·      Work with the master production schedule

·      Work with materials requirement planning (MRP)

·      Manage capacity requirement planning

·      Manufacturing inventory management and control

·      Plan procurement and external sources of supply

·      Scheduling, releasing and the tracking production orders and schedules

·      Measure production performance

·      Manufacturing finance

The course begins with broad, long-term strategic planning and shows how operations managers implement strategies and plans at more detailed levels and make decisions that have real-time effects.

Module 1: “Supply Chains and Strategy,” begins at the long-term end of the time scale, as organizational and functional leaders set a course that will accomplish their strategic objectives.

·       After an overview of supply chain management, Module 1 discusses the business strategies organizations use to create sustainable competitive advantages and the operations strategies used to produce the goods or services the organizations sell.

·       This module emphasizes the strategic alignment of operations objectives and competencies, so even if you are not the one setting strategy, this module will help you understand the forces driving a strategy so you can enable it to succeed.

Module 2, “Sales and Operations Planning,” examines how to translate long-term strategic objectives into tactical operations objectives using the sales and operations planning (S&OP) process, which combines functional plans into an integrated set of objectives for the planning period.

Module 3, “Demand,” analyzes various sources of demand to understand what customers want.

·       The module addresses how to align products and services to those needs and influence demand to better fit with supply. The module also discusses forecasting, forecast performance, and the bullwhip effect.

Module 4, “Supply,” covers how operations develop a master production schedule and a rough-cut capacity plan.

·       From there, the process becomes more detailed as material requirements planning (MRP) is carried out, capacity is checked in detail, and an MRP-based schedule and final assembly schedules are developed and used.

·       Acquiring capable suppliers and purchasing are also addressed, followed by product costing. The module concludes with discussions on managing supply issues and conducting product life cycle management (PLM).

·       In addition to determining materials and machinery/equipment capacity, two other broad components required for supply capability are money and human resources. Capital budgeting and human resource staffing are addressed in Module 1.

Module 5, “Detailed Schedules,” brings the plans closer to the moment of production or service provision.

·       This module also looks at alternative scheduling methods and production activity control using the theory of constraints or lean. Capacity is assessed and compared to production plans, and detailed schedules are implemented.

Module 6, “Inventory,” starts at the high-level aggregate inventory policies and decisions and then moves down into the specifics of when and how much to order, how to set safety stock levels, how to value and cost inventory, and how to track and control it.

·       There is also a discussion of the basic financial statements and how inventory is accounted for on these statements. The module concludes with discussing reverse logistics, the waste hierarchy, and product disposition.

Module 7: Distribution. addresses the supply chain, starting with network configuration and distribution planning and then looking at various forms of replenishment planning.

·       The process of managing customer orders is covered, as well as how to design reverse logistics into the distribution network.

Module 8: Quality, Technology, and Continuous Improvement. This module discusses the tools used to schedule, track, and analyze operations performance and to apply quality approaches and tools to ensure continuous improvement of operations activities.

·       The module concludes with a discussion of how to assess and implement technologies and reviews some existing and emerging technologies.