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Eighty‐five participants attended the 4th ISHM Display meeting at the Jaarbeurs Congress Centre in Utrecht on 16 October, 1986. The programme of the day started with the annual general membership meeting of the Benelux Chapter. The chairman, Mr T. Kwikkers, gave a short review of the state of affairs of ISHM‐Benelux and of the activities of the last year. He mentioned the temporary enlargement of the executive committee to give a new generation a chance to gain experience in the ISHM organisation and to take up some new activities. In order to raise publicity for ISHM and Hybrid Circuits a new brochure has been designed and a set of material for demonstration purposes was collected. With the material every member of the chapter can easily set up a presentation for schools or customers. This year ISHM‐Benelux has grown from 85 to 100 members and enjoys a healthy financial situation. Next year again emphasis will be put on public relations. Professor R. Govaerts signified that he was no longer available for a position in the executive committee. As Prof. Govaerts has been very active and stimulating for the ISHM‐Benelux Chapter from its foundation in 1976 up to now, the general membership meeting decided to appoint him as (the first) honorary member of this chapter. Except for Professor Govaerts, the sitting executive committee, consisting of 15 members, was re‐elected for another year. After the European conferences in Bournemouth and Hamburg the ISHM‐Benelux chapter is asked to organise the 1991 Conference. The executive committee is already looking out for candidates for a function in the organising committee, which must be formed in the coming year.

This article examines the differences in the off the peg or tailor‐made approaches to customer services. It also suggests trade‐off analysis as a means of determining what is most important to customers and how they will react to changes in particular services.

On 8 October 1992 the ISHM‐Benelux Chapter organised a one‐day conference entitled ‘New Trends in Electronic Packaging and Interconnection’ which took place in the Holiday Inn, Gent, Belgium. This conference was attended by 45 participants from the Benelux countries and Great Britain.

On 20 April ISHM‐Benelux held its 1988 Spring meeting at the Grand Hotel Heerlen. This meeting was totally devoted to implantable devices, in particular to the technologies used for these high reliability, extremely demanding devices. For this meeting ISHM‐Benelux was the guest of the Kerkrade facility of Medtronic. Medtronic (headquartered in Minneapolis, USA) is the world's leading manufacturer of implantable electronic devices. Apart from the assembly of pacemakers and heart‐wires, the Kerkrade facility acts as a manufacturing technology centre for Medtronic's European facilities.

Traditionally distribution service has been viewed as an ancillary part of the product, “a necessary evil”. As a consequence service levels tended to emerge over time to meet corporate goals. In the past managers would point out the fact that they had shipped 90 per cent of cases ordered within 24 hours when answering the question “what level of customer service does your company give?” This isolation of one element of customer service as representative of the level of service offered was a very common practice.

In the world of Physical Distribution the identification of customer needs and the measurement of their relative importance has in the past been ignored. This paper investigates this theme and concludes it is of paramount importance for would‐be suppliers to obtain the view‐points of their prospective customers.