Portal offers performance metrics

The American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC) intends to collect, validate, and report benchmarking data, as well as deliver analysis and best-practices information for the Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) Model developed by The Supply Chain Council. Receiving members also will get benchmarking reports aligned with their performance-improvement plans as they move through a SCOR implementation, begin a new Lean or Six Sigma project, or conduct annual company performance assessments.

Beginning this year, companies implementing the SCOR Model will have access to a no-cost benchmarking portal of SCOR-Model metrics. The effort is supported by the Open Standards Benchmarking Collaborative, and established by APQC, IBM, and others in support of open standards for performance metrics.

Members can select metrics most critical to their companies—e.g., reliability, responsiveness, flexibility, and cost or asset management. They also can ascertain what their target performance is in any given area—e.g., by charting time-to-market.

"This data and information has traditionally cost tens of thousands of dollars," says Lisa Higgins, COO, APQC. "With the online portal, organizations will shorten the benchmarking cycle time by weeks so that they have the information in hand to begin improving their performance."