Avis Budget Group announced on July 10 that the company’s process improvement initiative Performance Excellence (PEx), is in its fifth year this month and has helped generate more than $275 million in annual cost savings.

PEx is designed to make vehicle rental processes more efficient and standardized, save money, enhance the customer rental experience and boost employee morale. In five years, the savings from PEx have offset inflationary cost increases, generated incremental cash flow to be invested back into Avis and helped the company achieve record results, the company reported.

The program is instituted globally in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Europe with Avis Budget Group’s acquisition of Avis Europe last October.

Avis Budget Group CEO Ronald Nelson attributes the success of the program to the management team and employees for their ability to implement more than 100 projects under the initiative each year. Nelson said that he is confident that program will maintain momentum over the next five years.

"Performance Excellence has exceeded all of our expectations over the last five years,” said Avis Budget Group Senior Executive VP of PEx David B. Wyshner. “In addition to continuing to be an important strategic initiative for Avis Budget Group, PEx has become part of how employees worldwide think about our business every day. This anniversary not only honors our achievements to date, but also celebrates the robust pipeline of projects that the PEx team will undertake in the months and years to come.”

Read here a report from January on the key Avis Budget Group PEx projects from 2011.