BENCHMARKING STUDIES AND COMPETITIVE ASSESSMENT
For 30 years, The Beck Group has assisted clients by organizing benchmarking studies and competitive assessments that provide company managers with an ethical and accurate way to assess the competitive positions of their plants relative to other leading producers. By comparing a plant’s key operating metrics to other similar plants, the studies enable our clients to identify competitive strengths and weaknesses, as well as identify opportunities for operations improvement. Since the information in the studies is based on actual operational financial and performance data and is verified by Beck staff, it is the most detailed and
accurate available. All key aspects of the business are examined including costs, staffing levels, productivity, product sales mix, grade outturn, raw material to finished product yields, overall profitability, and much more.
For sawmills in the US South producing Southern yellow pine lumber, we offer subscribers a service called Sawmill TQ which provides comprehensive benchmark information via a web portal maintained by our partner ResourceWise. In other regions and industry sectors, we complete studies as desired by industry representatives.
CASE STUDIES
Softwood Lumber Manufacturing Benchmarking—The Beck Group completed a benchmarking study of Western US and Western Canadian stud and dimension mills. The study compared the participating mills’ performance during calendar year 2022.
Beck’s benchmarking studies allow participating companies to anonymously compare their operation to similar operations on a variety of metrics including costs, staffing levels, yields, sales realizations, and more. Participants receive a written report summarizing the results and a review meeting during which our staff helps interpret the results and discuss strengths, weaknesses, and opportunity areas for each mill—a level of personalized attention second to none.
Processing Cost Benchmarking Analysis—The Beck Group assisted a confidential client in developing comparisons of the processing costs for sawmilling, drying, and planing selected species and sizes of lumber products so that management could assess their mill’s costs in comparison to those of competing mills. Beck staff members utilized recent benchmarking results to make the comparisons.
The Beck Group is the industry leader in wood products benchmarking with more than 25 years’ experience in completing detailed studies benchmarking studies that include manufacturing costs, staffing levels, yields, product mix and selling values, and overall profitability. This extensive database is useful to clients in many other ways, such as comparison of their own mills to that of peers in the industry; feasibility studies; and due diligence for a variety of capital planning and mill acquisition assessment projects.
Southern Pine Sawmill Benchmarking—The Beck Group assisted a confidential lumber manufacturer based in the U.S. West in understanding economics and key operating metrics for Southern Pine sawmills. This information helped the client plan their own new greenfield sawmill in the Southern Pine region. Beck’s tasks included aggregating manufacturing costs, lumber sales, product and grade mix, productivity, staffing, and lumber yield data by mill scale and average log size to help the client predict the likely performance of the planned sawmill.
The Beck Group’s sawmill benchmarking database was used to help our client assert a better and stronger position to plan and develop a sawmill in a region where they did not have previous operating experience.
Sawmill TQ—The Beck Group, in partnership with ResourceWise since 2019, has provided Southern Yellow Pine (SYP) sawmill benchmarking data via an online information portal. Participating firms are able to access quarterly updated data about how their SYP sawmills are performing relative to their peers across a variety of key metrics such as cost, staffing, recovery, sales realization, and more. A common gauge of performance is achieving financial results that are in the Top Quartile of the industry (hence the Sawmill TQ name, where TQ represents Top Quartile).
Beck maintains constant awareness of current and past timber industry metrics. Using the information, participants can target improvement efforts on the underperforming parts of their operations—thus focusing management’s eyes where they are most needed.
High Hazard Fuels Availability Study—Working as a subcontractor to Mason, Bruce, and Girard (MB&G), The Beck Group assisted in a statewide evaluation of high hazard fuel biomass fuel availability in California. Beck’s role included visiting all the biomass power plants in California operating under BIORAM contracts at the time of the study. As with Beck’s benchmarking studies, each plant was surveyed about the amounts of high hazard fuel (that qualified for use per the BIORAM contract terms) being consumed at each facility, including delivered prices. Additionally, like Beck benchmarking studies we gathered data from each facility about BIORAM contract terms and their impact on the ability of each facility to procure the required amount of high hazard fuels.
Beck and MB&G made recommendations to the study sponsors about BIORAM contracting terms adjustments to better meet high hazard fuel utilization objectives.