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The Right Choice by Chris Gray

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Staying in Business with e-Business

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Does Your Supply Chain Measure Up? 

The Party's Over - The Real Aftermath of Y2K 

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Turning Education Expense into an Investment that Pays Off!

ERP Software: Valuable Tips for Selection and Implementation

Coca-Cola: "Always" Class A 

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Gray Research is one of a handful of consultants qualified to do Class A certification.  

Class A Resource Planning is a measurement of how effectively a company accomplishes the resource planning and scheduling activities of the business.

Certification is based on an objective assessment of the processes in the following areas:

Commitment to excellence

Strategic planning

Business planning

Customer partnerships

Continuous elimination of waste

Routine use of quality control tools

Partner relationships with suppliers

New product development

Sales and operations planning

What if simulations

Accountable forecasting process

Sales plans

Integrated customer order entry and promising

Master production scheduling

Material planning and control

Supplier planning and control

Capacity requirements planning and control

Education and training

In addition, you must demonstrate acceptable performance against objective standards in:

Customer service (>99% on time, in full)

Sales plan performance

Production planning performance (+/- 2% of agreed plan)

Master schedule performance (>95%)

Manufacturing performance (>95%)

Supplier delivery performance (>95%)

BOM accuracy (>98%)

Inventory accuracy (>95%)

Routing accuracy (>98%)

The idea of objectively measuring ERP results and a company’s overall performance originated with Oliver Wight in his 1976 newsletter. He followed up with an checklist for measurement published in the 1977 newsletter. Originally 20 questions, at least one of the current checklists spans about 250 detailed questions summarized into 32 summary questions.

To achieve Class A recognition, a company must be able to answer "YES" to 90% or more of the summary questions on the Class A Checklist. Companies scoring lower than 90% are rated B, C, or D, depending on how they score. Generally speaking a Class A MRP II company uses the system company wide, includes all functions and uses a single set of numbers, has active top management participation and use of the system, and has demonstrated significant improvements and operating results. B, C, or D users haven’t done nearly as well.

Class A is one of the most sought for, and least frequently achieved, awards available to manufacturing companies. We estimate that fewer than 2000 companies world-wide have achieved formal certification. To get an appreciation for this: there are 43,000 manufacturing companies of more than 100 employees in the US alone. More than 20,000 companies in the US have software for MRP II, but are falling far short of Class A results.

Click here to review the Summary Class A Checklist.

If you would like your company to start its journey to Class A Performance and Class A Certification, please contact Chris Gray at 1 603 778-9211 or email us at cgr...@grayresearch.com