Opportunities and Challenges of Benchmarking

The third advantage is that it leads to development of some ideas that were not being used earlier and these are innovative ways to improve methods and in many cases they have come from outside the industry. The use of benchmarking also forces organizations to check on the present process and many times these may lead to direct improvements in terms of quality or quantity directly. The last use of benchmarking is also advantageous in making changes more likely as the process involves the direct participation by the owners. (Defining Benchmarking).

             Define the problem.

             Today is the age of competition and it is very difficult to say which manufacturer is the best, and at the same time, this is an age when every manufacturer can claim that they are the best based on scientific studies of their machines. Let us view it in a simpler context and try to determine which team is the best in baseball, and may be you have a reason for determining this - you may love the game, you may be laying a bet on the results of the current season, or just curiosity. It is known that New York Yankees have won the World Series Championships seven consecutive times. In the opinion of quite a few of the fans, that would make them the best team. Thus one of the first points in benchmarking is deciding on the benchmark, and then one has to decide as to how the performance can be measured against the benchmark. If the required standard is not known by the organization trying to be the best then it cannot possibly reach the target. (Who's best? How good are they? How do we get that good?).

             In certain cases they are measured by definitions like Mean Time between Failures or MTBF. This will help the customer also and make him ask the manufacturer as to the MTBF for the product. Then let us say that on one of the products of the client is 120 hours and on another product is 150 hours, then that will have to be mentioned to the customer.

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