After my original post, I started asking some people in the plant what the source was for the assessment that was performed in our plant. Seems that Class A is an offshoot of MRPII. Oliver Wight put together a checklist that assessed a company for operational excellence with it's primary focus on use use and control of inventory and material (original edition and hence the tie-in to MRP). I got a copy of the Checklist (4th ed.) from Amazon books, which has a much broader perspecitve than the 1st ed.. I leafed through it briefly and it seems to have a real nice fit with QS9000. There are no differences in primary focus from what I see. The checklist covers strategic planning, people / team processes, total quality and continuous improvement processes, new product development, and planning and control processes, which all seem to tie in very nicely with QS9000. Granted a little bit more indepth analysis is required, but the for the most part, I like what I see. Will report on further developments as they occur.
