Singapore Innovation and Productivity Institute (SiPi) and Murdoch University : Stakeholder Report

In February 2014, Murdoch Singapore (a wholly subsidiary of Murdoch University, Australia) was engaged by the Singapore Innovation and Productivity Institute to undertake a research study formally referred to as the ‘Benchmarking Study on Innovation and Productivity of the local manufacturing sector and development of online benchmarking analytics portal’. Given the importance of Small to Medium Enterprises in Singapore, the study’s empirical focus centred on these firms, defined as having 200 employees or less and less than $100 million dollars in annual turnover. The key objective of the study was described in the following terms: ‘To characterise industry performance in areas of innovation and productivity through the establishment of top 5 to 8 indicators in operational performance and building a good benchmarking database of 200 local SME manufacturing & engineering companies. The online benchmarking analytics portal serves as a platform for individual companies to input their company data based on the productivity indicators and observe their competitiveness in terms of innovation and productivity’. Therefore the study’s aim was not to measure the productivity of SMEs in the manufacturing sectror, but rather to examine the state of key drivers of total factor productivity in manufacturing. The study was conducted in the space of twelve months, with the preliminary findings presented during National Productivity month in October, 2014, and the entire study completed by February 2015. The key deliverables of this study include this final report and the development of a repository of benchmark data collected from 215 SMEs, accessible through a bespoke web portal.The web portal will serve as a tool of continuing utility for the sector as SMEs are encouraged to benchmark themselves against their peers, industry and subsector leaders. Additionally, the web portal has been designed to provide firms with recommendations and ideas on how they may improve their productivity and innovation. In this way, firms will be able to track their performance over time, and the Singapore Innovation and Productivity Institute will be able to monitor sectoral developments and improvements as they occur.