Surfacing strategy, performance measurement and improvement in Australian small and medium manufacturing enterprises

This paper presents an example of international business profile benchmarking in Australian small and medium-sized manufacturing companies used as a performance management tool. The business profile benchmarking instrument was developed in Europe and applied extensively in manufacturing companies in the UK. It has subsequently been used more extensively in Europe and the database of companies has been internationalised by the inclusion of other European countries. This paper reports on use in the Australian environment and introduces the application as a performance measurement tool in a group of companies in Northern Metropolitan Melbourne. These case study companies illustrate the benefits of using the instrument to measure performance and identifying improvement through a comparison of performance of the firms with a peer group of a similar size, turnover and industry sector. The performance measures cover both financial and non-financial measures and over eighty measures are compared. The results of the application in case study companies are reported.