Supply Chain & Logistics Performance

Benchmarking your logistics and supply chain is a simple but effective way of identifying how well you are performing in a specific area in order to prioritise and focus management attention where it is needed. The overall technique is to provide a comparison with either financial or operational “best practice” to ascertain and measure relative performance. Benchmarking your logistics and supply chain can be anything from a simple comparison of easily identified factors, such as transport rates, to an in depth exercise looking at how processes operate for comparison with similar operations in other organisations.

Like For Like Comparable Operations

Almost anything can be benchmarked, the challenge is to find comparable operations and ensure there is a like for like comparison. In most operations, for benchmarking to be valid, it requires comparison at a detailed level. Cost per case delivered may sound straightforward but one organisation may be leasing their warehouse whilst another may charge nothing for property because it is owned. The devil is always in the detail.

Our Benchmarking Approach 

Our Logistics Benchmarking Consultants commence the project by undertaking a detailed review of the activity to be benchmarked, establishing what the activity consists of, and how the benchmark is made up. The next challenge is to source benchmarks that are relevant and valid. With a lifetime of undertaking detailed operational and financial reviews we are ideally placed to source relevant data for use in a benchmarking exercise. Often this can involve comparing best practice in one industry group with the performance of a company in another.

Examples of where benchmarking has been used include:

• Productivity of various warehouse activities including picking and putaway rates, replenishment and loading
• Vehicle and driver productivity with regards to running speeds, loading and unloading times and the productive use of time
• Picking errors
• Fixed and variable costs for different types of vehicle
• Carrier rates
• Order fulfilment
• Stock availability
• Stock cover
• Service levels in comparison with competitors

Following the completion of a benchmarking exercise, our Logistics & Supply Chain Benchmarking Consultants can assist in identifying the underlying causes relating to any areas of poor performance and prepare necessary recovery plans.