96 Supply Chain Excellence Whereas the benchmark and competitive requirements (Chapter 6) provide a top-down means of estimating the performance im- provement opportunity, the defect analysis is a more precise bottom- up method. In fact, if a decision needed to be made as to how much time is allocated to benchmarking versus thorough defect analysis, I would allocate one hour to benchmarking for every ten hours of defect analysis. It is the ultimate source for prioritizing projects and estimating benefits, as illustrated in the next phase. The entire design team agreed that the hardest task was to use the system alone to generate the first- and second-level sorts. Most of the team was accustomed to using the manual research method on the most recent issue of the day. They all agreed that while the system's sorts may not be perfect, they were repeatable each time the metric performance was reported. The following were their findings.