Supply Chain Management Review

Frank Quinn

Supply Chain Benchmarking Resources
March 13, 2008

Ed Koch, a mayor of New York in the 1980s, had a particular way of benchmarking his performance as mayor of the city. As he traveled around the five boroughs, he would walk up to residents and simply ask, “How Am I doing?”  For Koch, that was a lot more effective, and probably a lot more accurate, than conducting expensive focus groups.

OK, that approach worked fine for hizzoner.  But how about supply chain managers that want to benchmark their performance against others.  How do they know what to measure? And when you figure that out, how do you actually go about doing the benchmarking?

Sorry to say, there are no easy answers these questions.  And the answers are even tougher to find when you’re talking about benchmarking performance across a global supply chain, which most major companies are doing these days.  But there are resources that companies can turn to if they are serious about benchmark their supply chain.

To get on the right track to begin with, we recommend you read an article that appeared back in our October 2006 issue titled “Getting to World-Class Supply Chain Measurement.” (http://www.scmr.com/article/CA6389475.html.) Written by Debra Hofman of AMR Research, this was one of the best articulations of what supply chain benchmarking should be all about—and how companies should structure their benchmark efforts to get meaningful results.

From there, check out the resources of CSCMP (Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals). In particular, CSCMP offers Process Standards workshops that can help you set benchmarks in the logistics management area. For more on this program see http://cscmp.org/events/process_standards/index.asp.

An organization called APQC (which used to stand for the American Productivity and Control Council) offers a good amount of benchmarking resources, http://www.apqc.org/portal/apqc/site.  Most of the material is available to members only, but certain workshops and other offerings are open to the public. In any case, it’s worth checking out the web site and seeing what they have to offer (and maybe even considering becoming a member).

Ditto for the Supply Chain Council. This organization has been in the forefront of developing supply chain benchmarks—and pushing the advancement of supply chain management in general—in the decade or so of its existence.  As with APQC, most of the resources are dedicated to members, but some info is publicly available. You can learn more at http://www.supply-chain.org/cs/root/home.  Also, watch for the April 2008 issue of SCMR, which contains a detailed write-up of a comprehensive new benchmarking from the Supply Chain Council called SCORmark.

Supply chain benchmarking is not easy. But most that have tried it conclude that it’s well worth the effort.  The resources cited here are not meant to be an exhaustive list.  For example, I know some of the big consulting companies have practices that specialize in benchmarking and they probably deserve a look as well.  In any case, I’ll write about more about benchmarking resources as I think of them…or as people call them to my attention.

Posted by Frank Quinn on March 13, 2008 | Comments (0)