You visit your physician for a routine checkup. You feel great - though perhaps a couple pounds heavier and a wee bit slower than a few years ago. Still, you expect this visit to be like any other: Answer a few questions, hop on the scale, take a few tests...Instead, your doctor informs you that you're a heart attack waiting to happen. Your cholesterol is higher than the national debt, and your blood pressure - well, we won't even talk about your blood pressure.

But there's good news: Because you are now aware of your weak points, you can implement an exercise, diet and stress-reduction routine to prevent future problems. This is also how benchmarking works. Just as you use a height and weight chart to compare yourself to others with similar statures, you use the results of a benchmarking survey to compare your company with its competitors. And just as you should go for physical checkups on a regular basis, you should participate in benchmarking surveys on a regular basis. The health of your business and its ability to compete is not static. What was OK last year may not be OK this year.

The Spring Manufacturers Institute has developed a number of benchmarking surveys over the years, the results of which assist springmakers in almost every aspect of their business. Participating in them is the only way to obtain business data that pertains specifically to the spring industry.

Government and other data-collection agencies aren't interested in compiling  information about our industry. Springmaking is a comparatively small industry, and it's considered neither a leading nor trailing economic indicator.

The Key Business Trends Survey (for SMI members only) reports upward and downward trends in areas such as incoming business, shipments, inventories and receivables. It is a basis of comparison on national and regional levels. For example, if the survey shows that everyone else in your region is increasing orders and you're decreasing, that's an indication that you need to look at your company to see why you're losing business.

Results from the Wage & Benefit and Salary surveys (for SMI members only) help managers determine what to offer shop floor and office employees. With these two surveys, the regional breakdowns are especially helpful, since cost of living, and therefore wages, varies quite a bit from one area of the country to the next. "We participate in these surveys and use them all the time; they're quite helpful," says Linda Froehlich of Ace Wire Spring & Form in McKees Rocks, PA. "In fact, we'd like to see them expanded to include even more job classifications."

The Safety Survey (for SMI members only) grew from the membership's need to comply with an increasing number of safety regulations. It includes data on lost-workday injuries in the spring industry compared with those in the metal fabrication industry and overall manufacturing. "It acknowledges companies that are performing very well and spurs companies on that aren't doing so well," says Russ Bryer of Spring Team, SMI Benchmarking Committee chair. "The results of the survey are also useful in working with regulators to demonstrate that the industry as a whole is safety-conscious and to encourage them to focus on other industries."

The Market Summary (open to member and nonmember spring companies) tracks vital statistics in all key areas of springmaking: number of plants, capital expenditures, sales by type of product, sales by customer classification and more. "This is the granddaddy of the surveys," Bryer comments. "It provides detailed, specific information and requires participants to provide financial input. John Mackay of Mackay Research Group who process the data, takes great care to ensure that no one, including SMI, sees the individual data as it's submitted. The results are extraordinarily vital to members in comparing their performance with companies of comparable size in terms of sales."

In fact, all data submitted for any SMI survey is confidential. Assurance of confidentiality, in addition to the usefulness of the results, may be why so many members participate. Unlike many other associations that report a response rate of about 10 percent to their surveys, SMI gets a response rate of more than 30 percent.

Like taking a physical examination, participation in industry surveys is integral to the care, maintenance and growth of your organization. As Bryer points out: "People join SMI to improve the performance of their spring company. Of all the SMI programs, surveys are one of the most straightforward ways to accomplish this goal."

"The SMI surveys provide fundamental measurements of the business. We use them as a checkpoint to stop and look at how we're doing and why," says Froehlich. "The results are worth the time it takes to participate."

For information about SMI surveys, contact SMI by phone at (630) 495-8588 or e-mail at rita@smihq.org.