While the performance improvements are good news, the upward curve has little room left to grow and is noticeably flattening out. "In the last two years, performance has plateaued for best-in-class companies," Tillman says. These companies are maintaining performance at 99 percent or better, so there is simply little more that they can do. Getting to 100 percent is just not worth the additional cost or effort it would entail, he says.
Companies that have not reached best-in-class status still have some room to improve. In 2012, these companies achieved overall performance of 95.7 percent, based on 44 key metrics used by the study.
