Directions to Classes

To Molecular Probes:

Take Beltline heading west until it dead ends into West 11th Avenue. Turn right on West 11th. Go to the first light and turn Left onto Willow Creek(at this intersection left is Willow Creek and right is Danebo). Go up Willow Creek to Pitchford Avenue, turn right (only direction you can go). Turn right into the first parking lot you come to. The building that the class is in will be on the right, building "C" (there is a sign that says C under the windows on the corner of the building, however the paint on the sign is fading so it is hard to see). The front doors are locked at 5 pm, so you will need to wait for the instructor or another student to let you in.

To Symantec Corporation:

Symantec is at 555 International Way in the city of Springfield , generally located in the Northeast quadrant formed by the intersection of Gateway Blvd and Beltline (if coming via I-5 take the exit for Beltline Hwy East ). From the Gateway/Beltline intersection, go North on Gateway Blvd for just a few hundred feet and make a right onto Game Farm Road . Continue east on Game Farm Road and look for Symantec which is notably located in a yellow-orange two-story building. Park in the visitor’s area, enter the lobby and register with security.

To Rosen Aviation Displays:

Rosen is at 1020 Owen Loop South, generally near the intersection of West 11th Avenue and Terry Street. From that intersection take Terry Street, going North to Ed Cone Blvd, turn left (West) and continue until you come to Owen Loop South, turning left (South) and you’ll see the Rosen Aviation building on your right.

Map of 2545 Prairie Rd
Eugene, OR 97402-9700

CPIM Testing

There is a local site for APICS testing and should bring the best of both worlds to those in the Southern Willamette Valley – shorter trip, instant results. The site for APICS tests is at 55 Silver Lane (in the River Road, North Eugene High area).

You can take the test at the Eugene site or any other Promissor site (there are other locations in Oregon and Washington) but you can only register for testing via the Promissor testing service – you will not be able to register at the testing site. Plan ahead and reserve in advance – Promissor testing sites have a finite number of seats for each day the tests are offered.

The best way to register for a test is to contact Promissor by phone. If you are an APICS member keep your member number handy and be sure to get your discount. If you would like to register for the test via their website, be warned that others have found the experience to be very frustrating and possible case-study in poor web design. The phone method is more straightforward. 

If you would like to arrange to take a test at the same time as others, you can do so by agreeing on a test time and getting registered individually. If you are thinking of this as an option, you should probably be prepared to arrange this further in advance to make sure all of you can reserve a seat. 

As an on-going note: APICS-SWIV will not be offering paper/pencil tests for the foreseeable future. Other options for testing include any of the testing sites around the country where Promissor operates (check with Promissor for locations and availability).

Computer-based testing for APICS is available in the Eugene area and other nearby locations!

Please call 1-800-274-8399 or visit the APICS portion of Promissor

· One Method For Taking An APICS CPIM Course

· One Method For CPIM Exam Preparation

· One Method For Taking The CPIM Exam

One Method For Taking An APICS CPIM Course

I would not want to claim or even have it seem like I am saying “I have found the right way to take an APICS CPIM course” – there are, of course, many paths. Still, I took five courses and was able to pass five exams without a retake, so some part of my own method may work for you.

Certainly, you would want to consider how much time you have and the manner in which you have had best success in past coursework – consider and proceed along those lines. This reminds me of what I consider to be an example of someone who used what I think to be a very different method of learning – this is a very smart friend (with advanced degrees in physics) who told me that he could never figure out why people bothered to take notes in his college classes. He was wondering why they would take any attention away from the teacher just to write something down!

I think the best way to describe my approach to CPIM courses is to outline the cycle of activities week-to-week:

1)     I would begin my weekly work on the weekend by reviewing the previous chapter material (skimming really) and answering the ten questions.

2)     Next I would read the Participant Guide chapter for the next week. Mostly I read the text material, not paying much attention to the PowerPoint illustrations.

3)     If there were exercises within the section for the following week, I would try to work out those, in pencil.

4)     Following the reading of the Participant Guide I would move on to any reading assigned from the text. I always found this a little tougher, but tried to be mindful of my uptake or comprehension.

5)     In the Participant reading and the Text reading I took note of what didn’t make sense to me for later use.

6)     I tried to complete the above steps on the weekend – evenings after work were a bit harder to do even though we are talking about three hours total.

7)     I tried to make sure I was rested and relaxed on class day. Mostly, it helped to try and not schedule a long day at work and to leave a bit earlier, even by a half-hour. By trying to do this, I feel like I was better able to stay with the instructor and the class for the entire three hours (or the better part of it).

8)     In class, I was ready-to-go on the question review during which I paid special attention to those that I got wrong: this is one of the clues to passing the CPIM exams – learn how APICS structure their test questions (even if it doesn’t always make perfect sense).

9)     During class I tried to make the most out of what was happening – staying engaged with the instructor, listening to comments by other students and, yeah, telling the occasional personal story. I also brought up the questions I had noted in my preview reading.

Again, the above is a weekly cycle. Inside and outside of class, I wrote all over the guide and the text. And after each class, I was not, myself, in a hurry to do more until the weekend, but I could also see the benefit of someone jumping back into it quickly to see how you can do on the new questions (while the info is fresh).

There you have it – my method of preparing and taking an APICS course. I hope you have gotten something out of it, but if you have additional ideas that have helped you, send them along to me and maybe we can share a collection of other useful ideas.

 

One Method For CPIM Exam Preparation

To follow-up on my article of the method I used for taking an APICS CPIM review course, I thought it might be as useful share my method for preparing for a CPIM exam. It needs to be said, that I don’t have the single magic formula for this as there are probably as many good ways to prepare for these exams as there are people taking them. Just the same, I took and passed five exams with respectable scores (average of about 315 or so), so some part of my own method may work for you as well.

First, it needs to be said that I like to organize things and avoid procrastination. I usually do end up doing some procrastination, but if I organize myself to follow a fixed pattern then I usually do OK if I can do 75% of what I set out for myself.

Next, I have to say that my method depends on a lot of re-reading of the material and after-the-course note-taking. For me, taking notes “sets” the learning better. I have to admit, it wasn’t enough to just write things down as I could go into robotic note-taking mode. I should qualify and say that my method depends on reading for comprehension and note-taking from that basis.

The basic structure I used was to sign-up for an exam and start studying two weeks before the exam date. In those two weeks here is the cycle of work that I tried to do on a daily basis (for about one to two hours each day)

1)     Read a section of the Participant Guide and the associated readings from the text, and as I said, taking notes from those readings. I would also re-work the exercises.

2)     Read over my notes and then re-take the end-of-section questions from the Participant Guide. Having noted the correct answers in class gave me the ability to see how well I did. I then paid extra attention to the questions I missed on this second go-round (maybe it’s not a surprise, but I often missed on the same questions that threw me the first time).

I repeated steps 1 and 2 until I finished all the sections of the course – now I had a big set of notes that I could refer to for really condensed studying. Next up was taking the exam that came on the CD-ROM (which came with the Participant Guide). Here is the next cycle:

1)     The APICS CPIM Exam Content Guide is very useful as it shows the breakdown of topics for each course and also includes a glossary and some questions. I would go through each of the words in the glossary for the particular test I was studying for. If I wasn’t really sure I understood the term, I would go to the dictionary and learn it like I was in a spelling bee – plus I tried to give it some context from within the coursework.

2)     Now I would take the CD-ROM exam, noting which questions were missed

3)     Going back over the missed questions and reviewing notes from the course materials prepared me for…

4)     Go back to the CD-ROM and re-take the exam. Now, here you’ll either find that you’ll correct the ones you got wrong or get some new questions wrong. I pretty much kept at this cycle of re-studying and re-taking the exam until I got just a few questions wrong. The trick here when re-taking the test is to “not remember” the right answers but to always give the best answer based on your understanding.

That is about it – I know it is pretty methodical, but I always wanted to just take the exam and put the process behind me once and for all (and I do mean once!).

One Method For Taking The CPIM Exam

If there aren’t a bunch of books on how to take standardized tests (like the CPIM exams) then there ought to be. I am aware that test-taking strategies are not a substitute for poor preparation, but they can help one make the most out of what preparation you have done. What follows is a quick summary of what I did and I am convinced it helped me pass five exams (with no re-takes). I was motivated by getting the exam behind me and also by my cheapness.

There are some basic test taking practices – get plenty of rest the night before, set up your personal schedule in advance, make appropriate logistic arrangements, eat enough beforehand to get you through the exam comfortably, dress for a variety of temperature conditions and organize your materials (pencils, calculators) the night before.  These basics seem like common sense, but I think they might be easily forgotten – do take care of the basics!

The exams I took did not have a penalty for guessing so that is strategy number one: answer every single question, even if you have to guess. Strategy number two follows on that and recognizes that these exams are multiple-choice – don’t guess until you have eliminated as many wrong answers as you can (your odds greatly improve with every wrong answer you eliminate).

Each question on the APICS test has two elements worthy of some discussion. First there is the question itself and then there is the multiple-choice portion.

The questions can be worded in such a way as to trick those who are rushing through the test. They may bury a little word like “not” or “isn’t” into the question which changes the meaning – miss these little words and you’ll probably select the right answer for the wrong question (it’s no surprise that this ‘right’ answer is sitting there, just waiting for you). The point here is to read all of each question and make sure you understand the precise meaning of it before moving onto look at the multiple-choice portion.

Now we come to the four multiple-choices. The people who create these tests are called psychometricians and, boy, they must have some good, evil laughs when they come up with these answer sets. Personally, I found that among the four answers you can:

1)     Eliminate one right off the bat as just plain stupid or wrong

2)     Eliminate another one with some extra effort (careful reading of the question)

Then you might find yourself left with two that seem pretty close to being correct. When I had this happen I found that by going back to the question, I was often able to find some nuance in the wording that made one of the remaining answers more right.

Even when I was able to quickly spot a question's answer, I took a brief look at the wrong ones to make sure I wasn’t being led down the path.

I worked my way through the test from beginning to end and took full advantage of the time allowed. My method was to first answer the questions I knew were right, skipping all of the others. Then I would return and work on the ones I skipped – putting a little more work into them, but again skipping those that were giving me a problem. By going through the test in this fashion I found I didn’t get discouraged by over-working something difficult and that I could often get a clue about how to answer a skipped question figuring out or reading another. In the final passes, I was able to better judge how much time I could spend on the remaining questions because I knew how many there were.

Eventually, as time wore on, I was left with the ones where I wasn’t really able to come up with the best answer, but keeping in mind strategy #1 and strategy #2 I made sure I came up with my best guess by eliminating the bad answers I could. I was really hoping that I could always be at the point where I was able to pass the test on what I knew and then by careful guessing just add to my score.

Finally, I went over each question, beginning to end, just to make sure I didn’t make a dumb mistake like marking the wrong selection (picking “C” when I really meant to pick “B”). At this point I wasn’t trying to second-guess myself, but just make sure I was being careful.

Like most of the other methods I’ve written about, this one takes a little bit longer – I was often the last guy in the exam room and someone even commented that I took longer than they had ever seen. But I was motivated to make each exam session my last exam session for that particular test. Good luck on your exams!

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