Singapore placed sixth out of 22 countries in a recent benchmarking study of how well manufacturing firms are managed.

Manufacturers here performed better than those in countries such as Britain, Italy and Australia, but not as well as those in the United States, Japan and Germany, which took the top three positions. Singapore's performance was helped by the slightly higher proportion of multinational corporations here, which were better-managed than other firms, the study by the National Productivity and Continuing Education Council showed.

The World Management Survey is carried out in various countries using a fixed methodology, developed by the London School of Economics and Political Science.

In Singapore, 408 manufacturing firms were scored on four areas of management: operations management, monitoring management, targets management and people management. In these four areas, firms here did best in people management, ranking fourth out of the 22 countries. This was measured by whether firms promoted and rewarded employees based on performance, and tried to retain the best workers.

The survey results were released on Friday at the Singapore Manufacturing Federation's Singapore Innovation and Productivity Conference.