
Benchmarking in Action: Caravel’s Services and Methodology
Caravel Solutions uses benchmarking as a foundational methodology across all consulting services. This approach ensures that every recommendation and transformation initiative is grounded in empirical performance data and proven best practices.
Additionally, our strength lies in the exceptional expertise of our team: former CEOs, COOs, Vice Presidents, and senior leaders across diverse manufacturing industries. With careers spanning companies such as ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, Celanese, GE Plastics, DuPont, and Dow Chemical, our team has managed global manufacturing operations, overseen substantial capital projects, and executed significant organizational transformations. Their extensive backgrounds in roles including operations management, reliability engineering, supply chain optimization, and strategic leadership provide Caravel with unparalleled insights into industry benchmarks and best practices. Our senior experts leverage decades of firsthand experience to quickly recognize top-tier performance, clearly define what industry-leading practices look like, and deliver tangible, measurable results that drive sustainable competitive advantage.
From pre-acquisition due diligence to digital transformation, benchmarking is the thread that ties our work together, enabling us to consistently identify opportunities and deliver substantial value. Below, we explore how benchmarking underpins each key service area:
1. Mergers & Acquisitions Due Diligence and Integration
In the context of M&A due diligence, Caravel employs benchmarking to provide clients (often private equity firms or corporate development teams) with a clear picture of an asset’s operational performance and potential. Before an acquisition, Caravel’s experts assess the target company’s plants against industry benchmarks and Caravel’s database of similar operations. This includes analyzing metrics like production efficiency, staffing levels, maintenance performance, quality yields, and more, relative to best-in-class standards. By doing so, Caravel can identify both red flags and upside opportunities with remarkable precision.
Benchmarking is included in all of Caravel’s manufacturing due diligence projects. The team brings experience from having evaluated over 400 manufacturing sites across industries, ranging from oil refining to specialty chemicals to packaging, which provides a rich basis for comparison. In practice, this means when Caravel examines a plant, it can quickly say, “How does this facility stack up against the best we’ve seen in this industry?” Such analysis might reveal, for example, that a chemical plant’s maintenance costs are 20% higher than benchmark, or that an acquired specialty materials plant runs at a lower OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) than its peers, signaling improvement potential.
This benchmarking-driven due diligence yields concrete value for investors. Caravel not only uncovers operational risks (like equipment reliability issues or safety gaps relative to industry norms) but also quantifies improvement opportunities and synergies. The findings feed directly into the deal model and post-merger plans.
Benchmarking also plays a pivotal role in post-merger integration and assimilation of acquired plants. After an acquisition, Caravel often helps implement a common operating model across the new assets, effectively standardizing practices and performance expectations based on benchmarks. A prime example is a Non-Woven Textiles roll-up backed by private equity. The PE firm had acquired a patchwork of non-woven manufacturing sites that had inconsistent standards and were underperforming. Caravel was engaged to assess and benchmark each site relative to a “model site”, the internal benchmark of how a top-performing plant should operate. The team established a Standard Organization and Staffing model, clear roles and responsibilities, and key work process expectations as the benchmark for all plants. By comparing each facility to this model (while accounting for differences in technology, equipment age, workforce, etc.), Caravel identified gaps and developed improvement action plans for every site. This benchmarking-driven integration not only harmonized operations but also uncovered >$40 million/year in profitability improvements across the sites. Progress was tracked by a new central operational excellence (OpEx) team, and Caravel assisted with rolling out the program in waves, including training internal teams to sustain it.
A private equity client acquired a non-wovens company with multiple global plants. Caravel benchmarked each site against a “model plant” standard, revealing widespread inconsistencies and latent opportunities. By implementing a unified OpEx program based on these benchmarks, Caravel helped standardize operations and improve performance across all sites. The outcome was over $100 million per year of EBITDA improvement within a few years, turning a marginally performing business into an industry leader. The PE owner’s investment thesis was validated: after assimilating two additional acquisitions using the same benchmarked approach, they sold the business for $2.5 billion (up from a $326 million purchase), realizing an enterprise value increase of roughly $900 million, a direct result of operational improvements.
In summary, Caravel ensures that investors know exactly what they are buying and how to unlock its full value. This enables the investor to acquire assets at the optimal price and allocate additional investment to strategic areas to unlock its hidden value. Benchmarking provides the backbone for identifying cost reduction, “hidden plant” capacity, staffing right-sizing, and best practices assimilation during acquisitions, all of which translate to higher EBITDA, smoother post-merger transitions, and ultimately a higher return on investment.
2. Operational Excellence Transformations (Performance Improvement Programs)
Caravel applies benchmarking in operational excellence (OpEx) and performance transformation engagements for established companies. When a manufacturing organization (whether a single plant or a multi-site enterprise) seeks to improve efficiency, reduce costs, or boost throughput, Caravel’s first step is often a benchmark assessment. This comprehensive assessment evaluates the client’s current performance against both industry benchmarks and Caravel’s repository of best practices gleaned from hundreds of site evaluations.
Crucially, Caravel’s benchmarking doesn’t only compare hard metrics; it also examines processes and practices. We use a holistic evaluation framework covering areas such as personnel (staffing levels, skills), assets (equipment capability and reliability), systems and work processes, and even external factors like supply chain interactions. Each of these dimensions is benchmarked against what “good” looks like. For example, Caravel might benchmark a plant’s maintenance work order completion rates or preventive maintenance hours as a percentage of total maintenance hours against known world-class benchmarks. Or it might compare a company’s production scheduling process to lean best practices observed elsewhere.
This approach enables us to pinpoint specific levers for improvement. In many cases, initial benchmarking exposes a “hidden factory”, untapped capacity or efficiency waiting to be realized. Even plants that consider themselves top performers find value in a fresh benchmark perspective. In one specialty chemicals company, Caravel was invited to do a “cold-eye” benchmark review of two phenol production sites that were already top quartile in performance. Our team identified surprising hidden plant opportunities in areas like turnaround frequency and duration, cleaning downtime, and reliability practices. It turned out the assets were capable of more, historical data showed instances where throughput exceeded the assumed “maximum” capability. By benchmarking against those peak performances and industry norms, Caravel helped reset the entitlement targets. The result was a plan to extend the interval between major turnarounds by 1–2 years and streamline outage durations (using SMED techniques to cut cleaning time), yielding an impact of €10–15 million per year in additional production.
Another example comes from a polymer film packaging company with plants in Germany and the UK. The business was only marginally profitable and suspected that many assets were underutilized. Caravel’s benchmarking analysis compared each site’s asset utilization, product yields, and operating practices. The team discovered significant performance variability between shifts and between products. For instance, some shifts ran at much slower rates than others, and certain product lines achieved markedly different output on identical equipment. By benchmarking these internal differences, Caravel highlighted the need for standardized training and consistent operating discipline allowing for consistent operations, and providing the foundation to continuously improve. We also benchmarked maintenance and reliability practices, finding opportunities to improve uptime and reduce costs (e.g. some sites lacked preventive maintenance programs that are standard elsewhere). Importantly, a “product margin velocity” analysis was done: Caravel examined the contribution margins of each product relative to how efficiently it could be produced on available equipment. This benchmark-based analysis identified that many low-margin products were consuming disproportionate capacity. The recommendation was to rationalize certain low-margin SKUs and consolidate production of high-margin, high-volume products onto the most efficient lines, in alignment with best practices for product portfolio optimization. In essence, benchmarking provided a clear map of where the packaging company’s operations were falling short and how to realign them for better profitability and throughput.
For companies embarking on an OpEx journey, Caravel often establishes a “model plant” benchmark (if the company has multiple sites) or uses known industry benchmarks as targets (if a single site). All improvements are measured against these targets. We don’t just hand over recommendations; we help implement changes on the ground, leveraging the benchmarks to motivate and guide teams. Caravel’s consultants. many of whom are former plant managers and engineers, work side by side with client personnel to adopt best practices, be it a new maintenance planning process, a lean production scheduling method, or an advanced process control technique. As improvements take hold, KPIs are tracked and compared to baseline benchmarks to ensure progress. This iterative use of benchmarking keeps the transformation program focused and accountable for real results.
In one case, Caravel partnered with a $5 billion global chemical company that had grown through acquisitions and had a patchwork of inconsistent processes. By piloting a comprehensive benchmarking-based OpEx program at one plant and then rolling it out globally, Caravel helped the company achieve best-in-class safety, uptime, and yield metrics across its sites. Over two years, the company realized about $250 million per year in EBITDA improvement, and by five years, annual EBITDA was up by approximately $1 billion – more than doubling the initial EBITDA and far exceeding the industry norm. The key was developing a platform of standardized operating practices and tools against which all plants were measured and continuously pushed to improve. This platform also became invaluable for assimilating new acquisitions during that period, ensuring each new site quickly conformed to the high-performing benchmark standard. The financial payoff of this enterprise-wide benchmarking and transformation was massive, and it showcases how Caravel uses benchmarking throughout its OpEx methodology.
3. Organization Design and Right-Sizing
Benchmarking is not limited to processes and machines, Caravel also benchmarks organizational structures and staffing levels to ensure companies are “rightsized” for optimal efficiency. Often, manufacturing organizations carry legacy structures or headcounts that may not align with current operational needs or industry standards. Through its assessments, Caravel evaluates the personnel dimension of a business with the same rigor as technical performance. This involves reviewing the size, skill sets, and effectiveness of the workforce at each site or in each function, and then comparing those findings to known high-performing organizations.
For example, Caravel may benchmark the maintenance department of a plant (number of technicians, planners, engineers, per amount of equipment) against similar plants where reliability is top-tier. Or it may compare spans of control and layers of management to lean enterprise benchmarks. In the earlier non-wovens case study, part of establishing a model site involved defining a standard organization model with clear roles, responsibilities, and staffing expectations. Some sites were found to be overstaffed in certain support roles yet lacking in others, a misallocation that benchmarking helped to identify. By redesigning the organization (in that case, creating a central OpEx team and reassigning roles), the company not only reduced cost but also improved accountability and focus on the improvement goals.
Caravel’s approach to organization design is data-driven and collaborative. In one engagement with a high-performance materials manufacturer (specialty alloys for aerospace and energy), Caravel conducted an Organizational Design Workshop as part of a broader operational review. The team benchmarked the site’s organizational culture and structure against best-in-class practices, identifying that clearer role definitions and a more empowered shop-floor culture were needed. We worked with plant leadership to establish a shared vision and ownership for all roles, moving support groups closer to production and implementing techniques like ABT/MBT (Area/Maintenance Business Teams) to drive engagement and build capabilities lower in the organization to drive decision rights to the people actually doing the work. This “soft” benchmarking, comparing the site’s culture to those of world-class plants, led to concrete changes such as optimized shift schedules and enhanced communication channels. The result was not only a leaner organization but one better aligned to handle growth; in fact, the company targeted a 40% increase in production over the next few years with the new structure, with an upside of $55 million per year per site in potential value identified.
Right-sizing through benchmarking also means identifying where productivity improvements can allow a smaller, more efficient team to accomplish the same work. Caravel has helped clients reduce excessive overtime or contractor reliance by benchmarking labor productivity metrics. Conversely, benchmarking can justify adding resources in under-manned areas that are bottlenecks. In all cases, the goal is a capable, agile organization that matches the needs of the operation and mirrors the setups seen in high-performing peer companies. Caravel ensures that as businesses grow (organically or via acquisition), the organizational structure scales appropriately, and if businesses need to streamline, we do so in a way that preserves critical capabilities and morale.
4. Reliability and Maintenance Excellence
Unplanned downtime, maintenance costs, and equipment reliability are huge drivers of manufacturing performance, and here too benchmarking is a valuable tool. Caravel’s consultants (including specialists in mechanical integrity and reliability engineering) often perform reliability assessments by benchmarking a site’s maintenance and reliability practices against industry best practices. This can include comparing preventive vs. reactive maintenance ratios, mean time between failures (MTBF) for critical assets, maintenance spend as a percentage of replacement asset value (RAV), and other key reliability KPIs. By doing so, Caravel identifies where a plant stands in the reliability maturity curve and what gaps must be closed to reach top-tier performance.
One illustrative case involved a phenol and derivatives plant in Europe that, as mentioned, believed itself to be near top performance. Caravel’s “cold-eye” assessment challenged this notion by focusing on reliability opportunities. The team’s findings showed that even a top-quartile plant had room to improve in areas like turnaround planning and frequency, equipment cleaning cycles, and use of predictive maintenance techniques. Benchmarking against how world-class plants manage turnarounds (often extending cycles and minimizing downtime through better planning) led to recommendations that significantly increased uptime for the client. Similarly, Caravel often benchmarks shutdown durations and best-achieved line changeover times to help plants adopt SMED (Single-Minute Exchange of Die) and other reliability-centered maintenance improvements. In a powder coatings plant that was struggling with long batch cycle times, Caravel’s analysis determined that the biggest contributor to lost production was extended equipment cleanouts and preparation steps. By benchmarking the cleaning and changeover processes against lean SMED principles, they reorganized the workflow and cut those times dramatically, leading to a nearly 28% increase in throughput without adding any new equipment.
Benchmarking maintenance practices also directly ties to cost reduction. Caravel frequently uncovers cases where maintenance is overly reactive – for example, a site where reactive work orders were three times more than proactive work, indicating a fire-fighting culture. By showing how that ratio compares to a well-run plant (which would have far more planned maintenance), Caravel makes the case for investing in planning, scheduling, and reliability engineering. In the specialty alloys manufacturer case, this insight was pivotal: Caravel helped the company realize that reactive work being 3x higher than proactive was a major cost and risk, and set about redesigning the maintenance program. The changes, including better preventive maintenance and use of data, improved reliability and had an immediate effect on cost control and uptime.
Finally, Caravel doesn’t just deliver a list of recommendations, we assist in implementation. If a benchmark indicates that best-in-class plants use, say, predictive vibration monitoring on critical equipment and the client does not, Caravel will help introduce those technologies and training. If benchmarking shows that the client’s peer group does root cause failure analysis (RCFA) on all significant downtime events and the client does not, Caravel will establish that discipline. Our hands-on approach means we will often pilot a reliability improvement to demonstrate impact before wider rollout.
5. AI and Digital Transformation
Even in the realm of advanced analytics and AI-driven digital transformation, benchmarking remains important. Caravel’s philosophy with digital initiatives is to start with a clear business problem and objective, effectively benchmarking the current state of performance to identify where digital tools can make a difference. Rather than adopting technology for technology’s sake, Caravel ensures that any AI or digital solution targets a gap or opportunity revealed by operational benchmarking. For instance, if baseline analysis shows frequent unplanned outages are causing lost throughput, Caravel might introduce an AI-based predictive maintenance system to address that specific issue.
Caravel’s AI/Digital Transformation framework often combines People, Process, and Technology changes. In doing so, we benchmark the organization’s digital maturity and data capabilities against modern standards. A common finding is that engineers and operators are overwhelmed by data but still miss early warning signs of problems. Caravel highlights how best-in-class operations manage this, typically by implementing tools that sift “intelligent data” from raw data, generating a small number of actionable insights for the team. By showing the contrast (benchmarking the client’s current reactive, manual monitoring vs. an optimized digitally-assisted workflow), Caravel builds the case for investment in AI solutions.
A practical example is Caravel’s remote process monitoring service for an ammonia plant. Our team set up advanced analytics to monitor thousands of data points continuously, effectively benchmarking each parameter against expected ranges and historical trends. In one instance, an analyst’s dashboard flagged an anomaly in a sulfuric acid tank’s corrosion protection system, a subtle alert that the site team might have overlooked without the tool. Upon further investigation, it was deemed a probable failure in the making. The cost of a single day of downtime at this ammonia plant is very high (on the order of $0.5–2 million), not to mention the safety and environmental risks. Thanks to this digitally enabled vigilance, a major failure (and potential environmental incident) was averted, the plant scheduled a short turnaround to fix the tank, avoiding what could have been a catastrophic event. This story underscores how Caravel’s use of AI is grounded in meaningful benchmarks: the system “saw” a performance deviation from normal benchmarks and Caravel’s experienced team translated that into action. In broader digital transformations, Caravel always ties the AI deployment to ROI, for example, using AI to reduce specific downtime by X% or to cut energy usage per unit by Y%, as justified by initial benchmarking of those KPIs.
In summary, across all these service areas – M&A due diligence, operational improvement, organizational design, reliability enhancement, and digital transformation, benchmarking serves as the backbone. It provides the data-driven foundation on which Caravel designs interventions and measures success. By benchmarking first, Caravel ensures it focuses on the highest-impact issues and tailors solutions that move the needle on performance.
How Benchmarking Drives Value: Key Focus Areas