BATTELLE TECHNOLOGY INTELLIGENCE PROGRAM TO HOST WORKSHOP ON COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES

Quality products and services are essential to the success of a company. But will quality alone be enough for success in the 21st century?

The Battelle Technology Intelligence Program (B-TIP), will host a Jan. 25 workshop designed to help companies that are seeking competitive advantages for the next century. Looking beyond quality products and services, the workshop will focus on other critical facets that will be required to operate a successful business.

The workshop will be led by Dr. Stephen Millett, Managing Principal of Battelle's Technology Management Group, and Lennie Rhoades, a management consultant and industrial systems engineer at Battelle. The three-hour workshop begins at 9 a.m.

According to Millett, more than two decades of "total quality" management programs have made it increasingly difficult to differentiate a company's products and services alone. Quality, Millett said, is no longer an accurate barometer of a company's effectiveness, because sophisticated consumers now expect a basic minimum level of quality.

The workshop will assist companies looking beyond those minimum levels. Millett says the solution lies in a combination of quality, uniqueness, and price.

At the workshop, Millett and Rhoades will outline the three major categories needed for achieving the standout products of the future. They are:

• Individualized customer satisfaction. Companies must understand who is buying their products and for what reasons, at the individual level.
• Adaptable manufacturing. Companies must have the ability to produce smaller amounts of varied goods, rather than large amounts of the same items.
• Changes in the selling interface, or "virtual retailing." A company may have no warehouse and no inventory, but simply a catalog and direct lines to specialty manufacturers.