The Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport has absorbed the Institute of Operations Management, adding some 2,500 members.
The IOM will become an “membership body” within the CILT maintaining its public face but sharing back office facilities. Its focus is on manufacturing logistics, process management, planning and forecasting. It approached the CILT after running into financial difficulties.
The organisation has been in existence since 1963, originally as two chapters of the American Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS), and then from 1975 as an independent organisation called the British Production and Inventory Control Society (BPICS). It changed its name to the Institute of Operations Management in 1996. It has links with The British Standards Institute and has had a number of members on the BSI’s technical committees.
Professional institutes, particularly the smaller bodies, have found life increasingly difficult in recent years as it has become more and more difficult for them to survive purely on membership fee income.
CILT chief executive Steve Agg said: “Once we have successfully integrated this group under the CILT umbrella and demonstrated the effectiveness of an institute within and institute, we will be able to offer the same model to other groups that might want to be part of a larger organisation.
