Our customers are revolting! They are demanding more for less. They want world-class services as well as total-quality products. They want it all and they want it now. If we can't provide what they want, they will find someone who can. Customer loyalty is a myth formed in the mist of our distant past.

Customers in the global economy are more demanding than ever before. They can be; there is more competition than ever before. Cus­tomers take it for granted that you will deliver a low-cost and high-quality product or service. Now on top of that, they demand it faster and customized to their individual needs. To be a survivor in the mar­ketplace today, you must produce world-class quality products and ser­vices, designed to meet the specific customer's needs, and deliver them quickly anywhere in the world at a competitive price.

Global competition has emerged in most industries in the last 20 years. This global competition will only get tougher as time goes by.

UNDERSTANDING THE NEW COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT

According to the Agility Forum, there are forces that shape the com­petitive environment and exist irrespective of the actions of any one individual, company, or nation. These key drivers of global competi­tion are

• ubiquitous availability and distribution of information
• real-time communication from anywhere in the world to anywhere else
• accelerating pace of change in technology
• rapidly expanding access to technology
• globalization of markets and business competition
• emergence of new trading blocks and international, government-supported conglomerates
• global wage and job skills shifts
• environmental responsibility and resource limitations
• increasing customer expectations.

These forces, no matter what industry we're in, no matter what size company we are, affect us all. We need only to look around us to see their impact. The wreckage of companies that did not change fast enough is everywhere. Think about the big companies who aren't around anymore or who have had to merge to stay in business. Think about how different things are today compared to just a few years ago. The impact of these forces is only going to grow stronger as time goes by. To succeed in the face of these forces, companies must possess an integrated set of attributes. These attributes describe criti­cal areas that we must excel at to survive in the world today. Com­pare this list to your company. Where do you need to make improve­ments to be a strong competitor?

1. Customer Responsiveness—You must be able to work with cus­tomers and in anticipation of customers, to supply integrated prod­ucts and services that fit evolving life-cycle requirements of func­tion, cost, and timeliness.
2. Physical Facility and Equipment Responsiveness—You must em­ploy an ever-growing knowledge base of manufacturing science to implement reconfigurable, scalable, cost-effective production pro­cesses, equipment, and facilities that adapt rapidly to specific pro­duction needs.
3. Human Resource Responsiveness—The entire workforce of your company must be highly capable and motivated knowledge work­ers who can work in a flexible work environment, with substantial independent decision-making.
4. Global Market Responsiveness—You must develop a production strategy to anticipate and respond to a continuously changing glo­bal market, with operations and infrastructure tailored to local re­quirements.
5. Teaming as a Core Competency—You must be able to team within and outside the company to acquire and focus needed knowledge and capabilities to develop, deliver, and support your products and services.
6. Responsive Practices and Cultures—You must continuously evolve your core competencies, organizational structure, culture, and busi­ness practices, enabling you to anticipate and respond rapidly to changing customer demands.

A company can only possess the attributes required to be competi­tive through the efforts of its workforce. To exhibit these attributes, the workforce must possess the skills to respond to constant change, con­stant demand for more, and constant quickening of the pace. The chal­lenge is to ensure that the workforce, from top management to produc­tion staff, all possess the required set of skills.

The integrated nature of these attributes cannot be overstated. The attributes support one another. Remove any one of the attributes and the competitiveness of the enterprise is seriously weakened. Initiatives and education that help companies develop these attributes must also be integrated so effort in one area supports work done in another.

The demands of a global customer base will require the creation of a Next-Generation Workforce (NOW). This NOW will have to have specific skills to help their enterprises successfully compete. There are seven skills required by the Next-Generation Workforce. The seven skills and a high-level description of the training required to engender them are listed below.

To Be Continued