"Mastering Complexity in Global Manufacturing: Driving Profits and Growth through Value Chain Synchronization" is the second part in a series of reports around the ongoing Global Benchmark Study. This report shows that companies seeking to exploit global market, supply chain and engineering opportunities are hitting an invisible but nonetheless debilitating wall: Mounting complexity across the value chain. And, it is bound to get worse.

As manufacturers continue to globalize and accelerate new product introductions to spur growth, it becomes increasingly difficult to support the new products and coordinate the product engineering, sourcing, manufacturing, logistics and marketing and sales activities that are more and more scattered across the globe.

While most companies struggle to put together the pieces, a small group of manufacturers (7 percent) have excelled amid the complexity. These "complexity masters," as we call them, are being rewarded handsomely. Their superior ability to synchronize within and across their value chains — including customer-, product-, and supply chain-related strategies and operations — and to leverage their strengths in collaboration, flexibility, visibility and technology is helping them generate up to 73 percent higher profits, not to mention growth and shareholder returns that are dramatically better than for the rest of the companies studied.

To date, more than 800 companies from Asia Pacific (10 percent), Central and Eastern Europe (10 percent), North America (34 percent), and Western Europe (44 percent) participated in the benchmark study. Industries represented include aerospace and defense, automotive, industrial and consumer products, life sciences, process, paper, chemicals, high technology and telecommunications equipment. Participating in the Global Benchmark Study enables companies to benchmark their value chains against their peers and top-performing businesses around the world. It also helps them chart a course to improve operations and drive business performance to new levels.

Read the press release on this report, view the rest of the Global Benchmark Study materials or learn more about our Global Manufacturing Industry practice