Industrial benchmarking: A case study of performance analysis techniques

The purpose of this paper is to review two techniques to analyze the performance of industrial entities. Performance analysis can be applied to benchmarking of facilities. A case study of industry data is the basis for the application of measures. The reference data set contains information on sixteen warehouses belonging to the nationwide service parts distribution network of a large manufacturer. First, the paper documents the application of productivity ratios to warehouses. ‘Data Envelopment Analysis’ is the second technique. The results of both approaches are compared using the Spearman coefficient of rank correlation and linear regression analysis. The paper concludes that simple cost-based ratios appear to be the most suitable for situations where pricing structures for resources and services are uniform and known, such as for company internal benchmarking.