November 21, 2002	Thursday	Ramazan 15, 1423

ISLAMABAD, Nov 20: Minister for Commerce, Industries & Production, Abdul Razak Dawood said on Wednesday government was undertaking a benchmarking study to determine productivity standards for the spinning sector.

He said that recognizing the importance of enhancing productivity in cotton spinning, National Productivity Organization (NPO), a subsidiary of ministry of industries and production, has undertaken a benchmarking study, said a an official announcement issued on Wednesday.

Benchmarking, a new concept of knowledge-sharing was a continuous learning process, which encouraged improving one’s own performance by learning from best practices of other enterprises in the similar industry. In Pakistan NPO has been the pioneer of this concept.

It was expected that with the adoption of the best practices identified by NPO, overall productivity of the spinning sector would improve by 2.5 per cent, which would result in reduction in material handling and conversion cost by Rs7.5 million per annum in an average mill, thus ensuring substantial increase in profitability.