Benchmark Your Business with Top Shops
Shops that fill out the Top Shops survey before Feb. 10 receive a customized report that they can use to help improve their businesses.
Participate in the 10th edition of the Top Shops program by filling out the survey before February 10. Shops that complete the survey will receive a customized report that compares their key performance metrics with leading machining businesses.
Benchmarking is a valuable exercise that shows a company how it compares with similar businesses. Companies that do benchmarking are able to better evaluate their own business to find opportunities for improvement. Modern Machine Shop’s Top Shops program, now in its 10th year, provides an easy way for machine shops to benchmark their businesses.
To participate, companies fill out a survey that asks for information about four areas of business: machining technology, shopfloor practices, business strategies and human resources. All answers are confidential, and the survey asks for financial measures in terms of percentages (for example, sales growth rate and capital equipment expenditure per gross sales) instead of specific numbers (such as gross sales or net income).
In exchange for filling out the survey, companies receive a customized report that compares its data with the other shops that completed the survey. The report also gives a company’s overall rank within the survey and shows where it’s doing well, where it’s on par with other companies and where it can make improvements.
Four shops (one in each of the survey’s categories) are also chosen for the Top Shops Honors Program based on their responses to certain questions in the survey. These shops are profiled in Modern Machine Shop’s magazine and on its website. They will also participate in a panel discussion at the 2020 Top Shops Conference, which this year will be a three-day workshop at IMTS 2020. Some Production Machining readers have even been recognized with this award in the past.
