How can you decide whether the performance of your distribution center is satisfactory? Of course it is always benificial to look beyond ones own nose, but with whom do you compare yourself, and how do you make a sound evaluation?
Just imagine yourself as a competitive athlete – sprinting the 100m in 10 seconds and jumping about 2,00m high. How would you classify your performance?
To evaluate your own performance, you have to know your abilities in every discipline and be able to classify them! That’s why you need to compare your own sprint-ability to that of other sprinters and classify your high jump skills according to the achievements of other high jumpers.
Once you have identified your weaknesses, you can then address them directly and so become a better athlete.
Lessons from the athlete example can be easily applied to distribution centers as one asks questions like "How effective am I?" "In which areas is performance lacking?" and "How can I improve these areas to reach a higher performance level?" The Distribution Center Reference Model was developed to support you in these questions. It makes distribution centers and their respective areas comparable in order to make a performance comparison.
Within the Distribution Center Reference Model identical tasks are observed to guarantee comparability. For example storing and picking whole pallets is one task in a distribution center. For this task, the content of the pallet is not important.
Distributions centers can be individually structured by 26 defined tasks within the modular system of the DCRM.
One task is evaluated by comparing it with all identical tasks. Therefore, for every individual task, the most suitable benchmarking partner is selected out of all the distribution centers.
This approach guarantees that we are never comparing apples and oranges!