Editor’s Note: Who doesn’t love a story with a happy ending? Especially when it comes to on-site, custom training—we love to hear when our customers are satisfied with what we’ve delivered. Here is one such success story that includes a company undergoing JDE implementation, a knowledgeable expert, and a custom-training experience that exceeded expectations!

Ridge Tool is a manufacturing company that is currently implementing the JD Edwards Manufacturing modules in their North American and European plants. As a way of introducing JD Edwards to their key Manufacturing and Accounting personnel, Ridge Tool brought Klee’s Mastery Level Manufacturing and Manufacturing Accounting & Product Costing classes on-site. Thirty people attended the classes, which lasted two weeks. Their training goals were to:

1. Gain an understanding of how JD Edwards works when compared to Ridge Tool’s legacy system.
2. Discover benefits of the modules, to gain efficiencies for processes, procedures, and costs.
3. Build a strategy which will lead to the formation and creation of OneRidge, a single, global instance of JD Edwards running the business of Ridge Tool.
4. Complete a Project Charter, Implementation Plan, and Appropriations Request to guide and finance the project.

“Simply said, the quality of the training was beyond expectation; each of the stated goals was met and exceeded,” reports Daryl Smith of Ridge Tool.

The process for customizing the classes involved meetings with a team consisting of Ridge Tool's Project Managers and the Klee Associates consultant. The team developed a very comprehensive topic list, with the following goals:

1. Gain a fairly good understanding of what Ridge Tool does and how they operate.
2. Discover which functions of the software the client was currently using, if any.
3. Gather a list of pain points that the client was currently experiencing.
4. Agree together on the topics that the client would like to have presented during the training.

“Since we were already live on SOP and Accounts Receivable, there was no need to do any training in those areas,” reports Daryl. “Conversely, even though pieces of Purchasing were used in receiving goods and goods moving between sites – we wanted to see all of it again from a manufacturing perspective, so this was included in the training.”

In addition to meetings with the PMs, our consultant polled the VP of Operations, VP of IT, and the Corporate Controller to see if they had any “visions” for the company that needed to be taken into account – for example, to see if they were looking to move from work orders to repetitive manufacturing modes, or to gain visibility of product profitability.

All of this work was done prior to the training, and therefore allowed Ridge Tool to have class content that was entirely relevant to their business. “Since the classes were held at our company’s headquarters and the class was rather large (30 attendees), the fact that Klee Associates was able to customize the classes was of tremendous value,” says Daryl. “We were able to adjust the agenda to suit the needs of the attendees, remove any unnecessary content, and use actual Ridge Tool products, customers, suppliers, users, bills-of-material, routings, etc., as part of the practical examples used in the delivery of the training material. This allowed our trainees to focus on our current business needs / processes, gain comfort in JD Edwards (since we used our own data in the training), and not waste time covering elements of JD Edwards that were not pertinent.”

The team also spent several days prior to the classes configuring the system to best demonstrate how the features of the system that the client was most interested in could be used successfully to run their business.

“What was gained, and this came out just recently, was that with only a bit of training reinforcement, during the more formal requirements definition and fit/gap analysis meetings that were going on – the application team leaders felt that they truly understood what they were being asked to judge because they felt that they had such a good understanding of the software,” says Daryl.

The classes were so successful that Ridge Tool elected to extend the engagement with Klee Associates and retained the instructor, Pat Martino, as their Project Leader; the client based this decision on the quality of the instruction as well as the prep work Pat did prior to the classes to understand what the specific business needs were in order to customize the training. “Pat’s knowledge, professionalism, and experience impressed the Project Sponsors and Executive Management Team enough to ask that Pat become part of the team,” cites Daryl. Pat is currently involved in establishing a base application design, prototyping, and gap resolution for the Procurement module, with a go-live date of February 2008.

“Based on this positive experience, I would have to say we would definitely engage Klee Associates again for further in-house training and consulting needs,” concludes Daryl.

For more information on how Klee Associates can help you meet your training and consulting needs, contact Sandy Acker, ERP Solutions Manager, 1.877.832.2594 ext 140,
Sandy.Acker@ERPtips.com.