Successful companies aren't afraid of comparing themselves with the best. Quite the contrary: they use the comparison as a high-impact management tool. Those who benchmark themselves against the best both within and outside of their industries can define their own competitive position better, identify their strengths and weaknesses and systematically implement new objectives.

The European GEO Award is such a comparison. A.T. Kearney, in collaboration with the weekly magazine "Produktion", initiated the Factory of the Year Award in Germany in 1992. Since then, more than 1000 companies have taken advantage of this independent, cross-industry benchmarking.

The objective of the award is to pinpoint and reward best-in-class performance of manufacturing companies around the globe. The competition's evaluation model is tailored around a comprehensive and for the most part, quantitative assessment of performance indicators for "value creation", "customer satisfaction", "economics", "quality", "agility" and "innovation".

To download the questionnaire for the competition click here 

The winners of the GEO Award 2010 can be viewed here: the winners 

In November 2011, an award winning event will be organized to announce the winners and to exchange knowledge and experience.