“Top Shops” is a comprehensive benchmarking program for machine shops of all types and sizes. Using data from surveys completed by a number of machining businesses, Top Shops identifies optimal shopfloor practices as well as operational and business metrics that define world-class competitiveness in discrete parts manufacturing. Companies ranging from small job shops to large captive operations can see how they compare against the country’s leading machining businesses, which enables them to make sound decisions to emulate those identified as top-performing operations. Not only does the benchmarking data serve as a baseline “report card” of sorts for them, but it eliminates the need for shop executives to rely on gut feelings as a method of identifying and prioritizing improvement efforts.