Chapter 8 Benchmarking Stacey Beavin Stacey Knight Carla
Chapter 8: Benchmarking Stacey Beavin Stacey Knight Carla Wesner
Benchmarking Systematic search for best practices, innovative ideas, and highly effective business operating procedures A tool to achieve best business practices, NOT a strategy Makes a company look outside itself to determine if they are staying competitive in the market Often hard to identify best-in-class performers
Benchmarking Process: 6 Steps 1. Decide what to benchmark • • • Organizations need to decide where they want to be in the marketplace This is determined by use of vision and mission statements Critical success factors
2. Understand Current Performance • Flow diagrams, cause-effect charts • Quantify 3. Plan - What type of benchmarking will be performed? • Internal – looking at similar processes in a different operating division of the same organization • Product competitors – Check out what your competitors are doing • Process – Look at similar processes in other industries
4. Study Others • On-site visits • Questionnaires, surveys 5. Learning from the Data • Negative gap (external processes better than internal • Parity (process performances equal) • Positive gap (internal process better than external) • Description of a process must be detailed and quantifiable
6. Use the Findings • Translate into goals and objectives • Process owners and upper management must buy-in • Execute the plan 1) Specify tasks 2) Sequence tasks 3) Determine resource needs 4) Establish a task schedule 5) Assign responsibility for each task 6) Describe expected results 7) Specify methods for monitoring results
Discussion Questions What is the difference between a benchmark and a goal? What is breakthrough performance? Based on your current experiences, what areas do you feel are weak and could benefit from a benchmarking study? • What product competitors do you think could be used? • What other organizations could you use to establish process benchmarks? Which part of the benchmarking process do you think would be most likely to collapse?
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