KALAMAZOO, Mich. -- The top executive of the Grocery Manufacturers of America has endorsed the soon-to-be-published "ECR Scorecards."
acturers and distributors with the best road map to future progress," said C. Manly Molpus, GMA president and chief executive officer.
The "ECR Scorecards" are a set of assessment tools companies can use to gauge their progress and their partners' progress in various aspects of the initiative.
Molpus made his remarks as a member of a roundtable discussion at the 31st-annual Western Michigan Food Marketing Conference here.
"[The scorecard] creates a dialogue for trading partners to discuss how to move forward together on ECR," he said. "And it creates the ability to measure progress, both within individual companies and among trading partners."
He added, "We must link ECR's practices to trade behavior."
Other participants in the roundtable program included Robert Schwarze, president and CEO of the National Food Brokers Association; John Block, president of Food Distributors International, which includes the National-American Wholesale Grocers' Association, and Tom Zaucha, president and CEO of the National Grocers Association.
Due to be published this month, the scorecards were developed through a cooperative pilot program conducted by Procter & Gamble and four of Kroger Co.'s marketing areas.
