Essential Orders

BUILDING ESSENTIAL ORDERS DURING A STATEWIDE SHUTDOWN

As of May 1, 2020, under the advice of our legal counsel, we can begin to  manufacture orders only for critical infrastructure businesses during Michigan’s current “Shelter in Place” order.

 

If you currently have a purchase order in place with Grand Rapids Chair Co – and the goods on order are critical to infrastructure viability (see below for CISA definition) – we ask you to do the following:

 

  1. Fill out this form
  2. Send the completed form back to essential@grandrapidschair.com immediately.

 

HOW TO FILL OUT THE ESSENTIAL ORDER  FORM

 

In this form, please provide the following information:

  • Specific order information including your purchase order number (and its purchase order lines) that are essential
  • “Critical infrastructure category” for which the purchase order lines are essential
  • The form must be signed by an authorized representative of your business

 

The “critical infrastructure category” definitions are from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) memorandum from March 19, 2020. Click here to access CISA’s memorandum. For example, a critical infrastructure category is “Food and Agriculture: Company cafeterias - in-plant cafeterias used to feed employees." We realize CISA’s memorandum is somewhat broad and vague, however it is the best we have and is the guidance we have specifically been given within Governor Whitmer’s “Shelter in Place” executive order 2020-59.

 

WHAT TO EXPECT NEXT

 

After you have completed the form and submitted to essential@grandrapidschair.com, we will evaluate each and every essential order claim, and verify whether we believe the claim to be in the spirit of the CISA memorandum as our legal counsel has instructed us to do so. The responsibility for the manufacturing of essential products is that of Grand Rapids Chair Company, not our customers.

 

IF YOUR ORDER IS APPROVED

 

If we approve your claim, our Vice President of Operations, George Mason,  will sign the form, send it back to you, and your order will be rescheduled at our earliest manufacturing date possible.

 

IF YOUR ORDER IS NOT APPROVED

 

If your claim is not approved, we will notify you via email and schedule your order after May 15th.

 

Under the current “Shelter in Place” order, this process will no longer be required after May 15th. Accordingly, we are working now to reschedule every “non-essential” order in our system to May 15th or after, depending on our capacity and your “need by date.” However, as we have seen twice in the past six weeks, from the State of Michigan’s office and Governor Whitmer, the situation has been changing rapidly and all the information given above could be obsolete anytime – meaning sometime before May 15th Governor Whitmer could again extend the “Shelter in Place” order or perhaps rescind it and we are back to normal.

 

SAFETY STANDARDS AND COMPLIANCE

 

Nothing is more important than the health and safety of our employees. We have developed a comprehensive health and safety plan that we will use to restart manufacturing, safely. Our manufacturing team has reworked our facilities and workflows to keep our employees safe once they return to work. This includes increased space between workstations, mandatory hand washing breaks, increased disinfection and sanitation of workstations, touch free job updates, and the mandatory use of face masks.