Addressing the Needs of Key Stakeholders

Private Equity Firms & Corporate Development Leaders

For investors and M&A teams, time is money. Our benchmarking provides a rapid, reliable evaluation of a manufacturing asset’s strengths, weaknesses, and improvement potential during due diligence. Caravel’s approach helps answer critical questions like: What is the true EBITDA improvement opportunity here? What operational risks might affect valuation? By quantifying synergies and setting a clear post-acquisition improvement plan, Caravel enables PE firms to underwrite deals with confidence and often bid more competitively, knowing they have a blueprint to create value. Post-close, the focus on standardization and quick assimilation of acquisitions means faster realization of investment thesis. Caravel’s benchmarking is an investor’s ally for both risk mitigation and value creation.

COOs and Operations Executives

Chief Operating Officers and operations leaders are tasked with delivering performance targets and often transforming their operations to be world-class. Benchmarking gives them a strategic dashboard to know where to focus. Caravel’s detailed assessments show COOs exactly which plants or which aspects of the operation are lagging and why. This allows for informed decision-making on capital allocation (e.g., where to invest in upgrades) and operational initiatives (e.g., which best practices to roll out company-wide). For a COO managing multiple facilities, Caravel’s creation of a common operating platform, with uniform metrics and practices, provides peace of mind that there is consistency and continuous improvement across the network. Moreover, because Caravel’s approach is collaborative, it often unites plant-level and corporate-level perspectives, giving COOs confidence that improvement plans have front-line buy-in and are realistic. The result is faster execution of strategy and an earlier realization of benefits. In essence, Caravel helps COOs translate corporate performance goals into actionable site-level plans benchmarked against the best in the business.

Plant Managers & Maintenance Leads

For those running the plants day-to-day, benchmarking can sometimes seem abstract. Caravel makes it tangible and empowering. By involving plant managers and their teams in the benchmarking process (site visits, data collection, workshops), Caravel ensures these leaders see benchmarking as a tool for them, not against them. The outcomes are highly practical: a plant manager might receive a playbook of specific improvements (e.g., reduce changeover time by 30% using SMED, or improve OEE from 85% to 90% by tackling top downtime causes) drawn from benchmarks. Maintenance and reliability leads might get a clear list of maintenance best practices to implement, along with coaching on how to do so, in order to reach best-in-class reliability standards. Many plant managers appreciate that Caravel’s consultants have walked in their shoes, and that recommendations come with an understanding of daily operational challenges. This credibility, combined with data, helps overcome resistance to change. Ultimately, benchmarking gives plant leaders a clear target and justification for improvements: they can tell their teams “this is what’s possible because others have done it” and celebrate progress as gaps close. Caravel often sees plant personnel take great pride in rising from third or second quartile to first quartile performance in certain metrics.

CEOs and Board Members

At the highest level, CEOs and boards are concerned with enterprise value, strategic risk, and long-term competitiveness. Caravel’s benchmarking approach addresses these concerns by ensuring that improvement initiatives are aligned with value creation. CEOs can feel confident that operational excellence programs are not just about incremental tweaks, but about fundamentally elevating the business’s performance to industry-leading levels, which can underpin growth, pricing power, and resilience. Additionally, benchmarking often uncovers risks that need attention (safety issues, single points of failure, etc.), which if addressed, safeguard the company’s reputation and continuity. Caravel communicates with executives in financial and strategic terms, translating shop-floor improvements into EBITDA, ROI, and enterprise value impact, which is exactly what boards want to see. Furthermore, Caravel’s emphasis on culture and sustainability of results means CEOs can be assured that changes will last and continue delivering value beyond a one-time project. In summary, for top executives, Caravel’s benchmarking provides both a compass and a safety net, pointing the way to excellence and catching issues before they become problems.

Conclusion

In a world where manufacturing competitiveness is continually redefined, benchmarking provides the anchor and the compass for transformational improvement. Caravel Solutions has embraced this philosophy fully: benchmarking is not a one-time check, but a continuous backbone of how we drive performance for clients. As you consider the next steps for your organization, whether it’s an acquisition, a turnaround, or a push to “gold standard” operations, think about the benchmarks that will guide your journey. With Caravel’s support, those benchmarks can become catalysts for change and cornerstones of value creation, ensuring that your operations not only catch up to the best, but become the best in class.