Informance Releases 2009 Manufacturing Benchmark Research

Manufacturers can now leverage cross-industry benchmark insight to drive sustainable operations performance.

NORTHBROOK, IL - Informance International, a leader in manufacturing business intelligence and enterprise manufacturing intelligence solutions announces the release of this year’s manufacturing performance benchmark study. The 2009 benchmark research is the largest Informance benchmark project to-date, analyzing over 17,000 production weeks across more than 700 global manufacturing operations, in four distinct manufacturing sectors – consumer packaged goods, food and beverage, pharmaceutical, and industrial. The period studied was from January through June 2009. Insights derived from the study demonstrate how practices of best-in-class companies impact manufacturing performance. Manufacturers will use this insight as a starting point to understand how they stack up against their peers and develop an action plan for operational improvement, or modify an existing improvement program based on proven evolving best practices.

Leading manufacturers rely on Informance benchmarking to gain insight about the practices that impact manufacturing performance. Unlike survey-based studies, Informance researchers use a minimum of 3 months of real-time manufacturing performance data collected with the Informance EMI platform. The highly granular and rich real-time nature of Informance EMI allows analysts to correlate attributes of best-in-class performers across a variety of metrics, and deliver meaningful insight and direction for performance improvement.

The 2009 Informance Manufacturing Operations Benchmark Study revealed that:

• Top quartile performers currently operate at 78% overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) with “best of the best” performers at 93%.
   
• Typical plants in the CPG industry average more than 88,100 short duration interruptions per year.
   
• Food and beverage manufacturers struggle the most with equipment failures, but best in class manufactures have found ways to minimize those losses. Equipment failures represent only 6% of capacity for best in class manufacturers, but they represent 16% of capacity for the lowest quartile.
   
• Pharmaceutical manufacturing operations struggle the most with changeovers and short, frequent stops. Changeovers on average take up 14% of capacity, compared to only 3% across all industries, which is almost five times more.

As the economy continues to challenge businesses to achieve greater efficiencies, many companies look to manufacturing operations to achieve their efficiency goals. For many, benchmarking manufacturing performance in relation to actual practices has been key to driving and sustaining higher performance levels.

“When businesses benchmark manufacturing performance and examine corresponding strategies of best-in-class performers (lines, plants, and even other companies), they close the gap between today’s performance and what could be,” comments, John Oskin, Executive Vice President with Informance International. “Benchmarking activities can be as simple as comparing shifts, lines and product categories. But when the benchmarking effort spans entire plants throughout the enterprise, and leverages insight from the manufacturing community, there is a shift in perception about what is realistic and possible.”

To learn more about benchmarking manufacturing performance, or to schedule a briefing, email briefing@informance.com.