Benchmarking in Poultry Meat Production

Geraldo Broering Alves, Ger. General – South America Agri Stats INC, was in charge of the presentation “Benchmarking in Poultry Meat Production” during the LPN Congress 2018.

Benchmarking is a continuous process by which you take as a reference the products, services or work processes of leading companies, to compare them with those of your own company and then make improvements and implement them.

It is not about copying what your competitors are doing, but learning what the leaders are doing to implement it in your company by adding improvements. If we take as a reference those who stand out in the area we want to improve and study their strategies, methods and techniques to subsequently improve and adapt them to our company, we will achieve a high level of competitiveness.

Types of Benchmarking

There are different types of benchmarking: competitive and internal. The common goal of the two types is to help managers look outside their departments, their organizations, their competitors or other sectors where there are best-in-class companies.

Competitive Benchmarking

Internal benchmarking is carried out within the company itself. It is usually carried out in large companies that have different departments or also with business groups that are formed by several companies. In the process, a department or area that is an example to follow for its good results is identified in order to carry out a Benchmark with the other internal departments of the company.

Internal Benchmarking

Competitive benchmarking seeks to measure the products, services, processes and functions of the main competitors in order to make a comparison with our company and to be able to detect and carry out improvements that surpass those of our competitors.

Benchmarking Stages

Proposal of steps to follow for the elaboration of a good Benchmarking:

1. Planning
2. Data collection
3. Analysis
4. Action
5. Follow-up

Benchmarking Stages

1-Planning

The main objective of this first stage is to plan the research to be conducted. At this stage we have to answer three questions:

• What do I want to measure?
• Who do I want to measure?
• How are we going to do it?

2-Data

Data collection is fundamental to benchmarking; the success or failure of the whole process will depend to a large extent on it. We can obtain data from different sources: internal, professional associations or our own research, among others.

3-Analysis

Once we have gathered the necessary information, we have to analyze the elements that cause the differences between our company and the companies studied, in order to identify opportunities for improvement.

4-Action

The next step after analyzing the information and having selected the aspects of reference in the selected companies, it is time to adapt them to our company but always implementing improvements.

5-Follow-up

In this last stage, a report should be made with all the information highlighted from the process. This will help to resume work on subsequent projects. The idea is that it becomes a sustained company exercise over time to adopt continuous improvement.

Now, in the presentation we will put it into practice using the following examples:

A long-term vision. Changes in cost, production and efficiency

Players

• Hatching egg cost
• Production 45 weeks
• % Hatching 45 weeks
• % Breeding mortality
• Weight discarded breeders
• Incubable Eggs / Hen (65 weeks)
• Chicks / Hen (65 weeks)

Broilers

• Broiler weight
• Cost of live chicken and farm cost
• Chicken weight and feed conversion

Process plant

• Yield % housing (WOG)
• Yield breast