Benchmarking as Performance Indicator

After transforming traditional chemical sites into new industrial parks, the European industrial park landscape is, in the meantime, in a phase of restructuring and consolidation. With regard to restructuring, the issues to realise cost saving potentials are further increasing focus on core activities and the sale of non-core areas, the increase in efficiency through further improvement of organisational structures and business processes as well as other possibilities like benchmarking and best practice initiatives.

Therefore, FESTEL CAPITAL organises an exchange of experiences including a detailed benchmarking of chemical-related industrial parks on a regular basis.

Almost all relevant areas of an industrial park are covered. The main focus is on maintenance and in many areas also the operation of selected infrastructures and various services are considered.

• Supply of electric energy and steam
• Supply of water (industrial and drinking water) and gases (compressed air, oxygen, nitrogen)
• Traffic infrastructure (roads and tracks, including street lighting)
• Data and telecommunication networks
• Facility management with special focus on investments and maintenance
• Works fire and security services

Conceptual questions such as operating and maintenance budgets and costs as well as pricing models are discussed. The goal is the evaluation of the operational competitiveness and the identification and characterisation of cost saving potentials. Much time has been spent in developing an industrial park specific methodology to process the input data in a well structured manner and to allow a comparison of the results. Therefore, more than 50 key performance indicators have been defined and calculated.

Workshops are organised to give the participants the chance to share their experiences and best practice examples with peers. The benchmarking makes possible a discussion based on comparable and comprehensible figures. In general, only costs (total costs and, separately, influenceable costs) and not prices are considered. An important aspect for all the areas is to take into account the different histories and factors by using appropriate complexity correction factors.

The examples of the benchmarking show that there are still significant cost saving potentials in some industrial parks. The performance level makes a clear difference between high performance industrial sites and sites which have to be more consequent in their restructuring and cost saving efforts.

The developed benchmark and best practice methodology is well suited to evaluate best practice in the field of industrial park infrastructures. It should be necessary for each industrial park to understand the individual performance level and to adapt best practice in all areas