Professional Development Meeting-North

Evening Topic :Building Competitive Advantage for Your Business

Speaker : Raj Sharma

Location: Crowne Plaza Hotel, Monroe, NJ
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Date : 11/17/10

Registration: 5:30 PM
Dinner: 6:30 PM
Presentation: 7:45 PM

Cost includes dinner:

• $30 member
• $35 non member
• $20 student

Payment methods:

We accept PayPal, checks (payable to APICS-PRSJ) or cash at door.

Pre-registration helps keep our cost down. Walk-ins are always accepted.

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Building Competitive Advantage for Your Business

Over the last two decades, the economic landscape has changed dramatically, featuring the most significant downturn since the Great Depression, the rapid decline of manufacturing employment, the emergence of the internet and advanced information technology and the beginning of the sustainability revolution. As a result of these trends, the challenges faced by manufacturers have also changed. Innovation has become an imperative for survival and growth. The demand for environmental stewardship and energy efficiency has dramatically increased, and even the smallest firms must navigate global markets and supply chains.

The Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) has been in existence for over 20 years, and has accumulated a solid base of experience with thousands of manufacturing clients. There are 60 regional centers across the US, employing over 1500 non federal staff in 370 chapters. In FY 2008, MEP provided in-depth assistance to over 7000 manufacturers that resulted in $3.6 billion increase in sales, $5.5 billion in retained sales, $1.4 billion in cost and investment savings and the creation and retention of 53,000 jobs – all during a recession. Most of these results come from assisting small firms with manufacturing process and quality improvements.

ITAC serves the nearly 8000 small firms in the five boroughs of New York City and provides in depth assistance to over 200 firms each year. Assistance is provided through consulting and training work provided through third party consultants and directly by ITAC Staff. There is a wide range of project activity from Strategic Planning to Customer Service Training. Two case studies dealing with company transformation and change and the resulting impact will be presented.
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Raj Sharma

Raj Sharma is the Director of Client Services for ITAC, the NYC chapter of the US Dept of Commerce’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership program. He works with ownership and top management of small and midsized industrial firms, to identify and work on activities that improve their firm’s performance. All of their work needs to have measurable impact for ITAC to retain its Federal and State funding.

Raj brings almost 30years of experience working in a number of manufacturing fields. He is a Manufacturing, Distribution and Operations industry professional, who has managed and led enterprise wide business process improvement projects in Building Materials Supply, Woodworking, Picture Frame, Wall Décor and Printing Industries.

He received his BS in Chemical Engineering from The Cooper Union, a
diploma in Financial Management from NYU, and has an MS in Management of
Technology from the Stevens Institute of Technology. In addition, he recently passed the CSCP exam, is a certified instructor of Inventory Management, Lean Enterprise applications viz, Value Stream Mapping, Workplace Organization (5S), Business Process Analysis and Re- engineering for all parts of the "Quote to Cash" Cycle.
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