Dedham, Massachusetts; October 3, 2007: Benchmarking Analysis Tool offers on-demand reporting, giving benchmarking companies the ability to create their own reports and view benchmarking data in a way that’s most useful to them. The tool helps companies break down the complexity of various measures and help determine what actions they need to take to improve operations.
Multifaceted Automation Benchmarking
ARC’s Benchmarking Consortium has been maturing over the last few years and now consists of a broad array of process and hybrid manufacturing corporations. Participating global companies have been using the data to compare to other companies, and are now able to take the analysis of metrics data one step further. “Not only are we comparing detailed metrics from 115 different plants around the world and showing how a single plant compares to each of the others, but we can also make further assumptions based on the interdependency of different metrics,” said Dick Hill, ARC Vice President and General Manager, and leader of the ARC Benchmarking Consortium. Dick adds, “We need to look at the metrics beyond their face value and determine what is optimal for each plant. For example, can you really deduce that fewer people are better in a plant? When compared to another metric, like the number of alarms, you might see that in some instances, more people mean fewer alarms, but in others, more people still correlate to more alarms. This is a red flag that more work needs to be done at this plant.”
Creating Value Metrics
Many automation metrics are focused on the cost side, rather than the value side, of the business. Two factors clearly co-exist in value metrics: efficiency and effectiveness. While it is important to compare “efficiency” metrics, like the number of people managing a plant, the effectiveness metric can portray whether the operations are really running smoothly. An “effectiveness” metric might tell whether a plant was making more profit with the same labor cost as another of the benchmarked plants.
"In using the Benchmarking Analysis Tool, I have been able to clearly see differences in plants that were not clear in the past,” according to Doug Lutz of NOVA Chemicals, an early user of the new tool. “The tool continues to improve to allow thoughtful analysis and action on the submitted Benchmarking Consortium data."
The ARC Benchmarking Consortium was formed in January 2005 by a number of major companies in the process industries and has expanded to include hybrid companies.
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