"BP's UK Terminals have taken part in the Juran benchmarking program for 8 years. This has given us an independent assessment of performance and opportunity for improvement, and, more especially, highlighted where to look to make those improvements. More recently BP submitted data from 15 major oil & gas assets that it operates around the globe into the Juran studies. As a direct result of the Terminals and Pipelines studies completed in 2002, BP's Senior Management has set targets for improvements in operating costs for its midstream assets." - BP, Mr. S. Brand, senior business advisor, ’02

"Our operation started to benchmark back in 1999. We did not come out as well as we thought. So we went through a denial phase. After careful analysis and second opinions we accepted that we had substantial room for improvement. We assigned a full time continuous improvement officer. We started with the low hanging fruit and have achieved substantial multi-million savings in OPEX. In the meantime we have been able to make these savings sustainable over time. This year we will attack the second level improvement opportunities and we have again set some aggressive goals (approximately 5 million US$ savings). In 2005 we aim at achieving a so-called 1st quartile OPEX performance." - BP, Mr. N. Manson, process improvement manager, ’03

"Benchmarking plays a pivotal role in both the diagnostics of how we do today and in long term planning. We have embarked on a series of improvements in our operations and have been able to achieve some impressive savings with the support of benchmarking outputs. Moreover, BP aims at benchmarking "value chains" (for example: well-platform-pipeline-receiving processing terminals-storage and distribution) rather than individual assets, because value chains produce the product for our customer, and that is really what it's all about. This approach requires a consistent and homogeneous approach for the various assets that altogether form that chain." - BP, Mr. T. Desmond, Benchmarking coordinator and business advisor, ’03

"We have reduced our energy costs by 30% thanks to actions taken upon the benchmarking results." - NAM-Shell, Mr. P. Drost, Managing Director Den Helder gas processing plant, ’02

"Benchmarking has led to Shell’s reengineering of its NS assets maintenance practices leading to 41% maintenance cost reductions. That is why we submitted Juran Institute’s program for the European Best Practice Benchmarking Award." - Shell, Mr. N. Kauffmann, senior maintenance manager and benchmarking focal point Expro, ’97

"Benchmarking should not become a surrogate for action! Those who participate in benchmarking studies and don’t act upon them provoke a double drawback! They are looking in their rear-view mirrors at others which causes a loss of time and in the meantime they don’t see what is happening ahead of them." - Statoil, Mr. G. Bensen , corporate benchmarking manager, ’99