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From humble beginnings -- the surveyor's reference mark for position and elevation -- the notion of a benchmark and benchmarking have become almost obligatory for any organization wanting to improve its products or processes to better serve customers and improve business results. In today's business application, the benchmark is that which incorporates the best practices, the epitome of excellence; and benchmarking is the activity of learning, exchanging and adapting best practices to your organization. Benchmarking is finding and implementing best practices.
The Japanese word dantotsu -- striving to be the best of the best -- captures the essence of benchmarking. Benchmarking is a positive, proactive process to change operations in a structured fashion to achieve superior performance. The purpose of benchmarking is to gain a competitive edge.
In a recent article, The Globe and Mail reported that benchmarking was the third most used management tool in 1996, having risen from sixth place in 1993. This confirms the continuing, expanding and intensifying interest in this improvement approach around the world.
History and worldwide reach
Benchmarking and the search for best practices have had a wave-like movement across the globe. It was picked up and embraced by Europe within years of its significant use in the USA. What has been astounding, however, is the intensity with which it has been pursued in the Asia/Pacific area. Likewise, there has been somewhat of a lag in application in the South and Central Americas and in Canada. But, more importantly, this trend shows that this business-improvement approach can, in fact, be successfully applied everywhere. This should serve to motivate organizations, around the globe, to learn from each other and bring benchmarking, worldwide, up to an exemplary level of expertise and application.
There is now a continuing interest and high demand for case studies of successful benchmarking investigations. This demand is second only to the preliminary interest that organizations have in finding performance data. Once the organization understands what the benchmark data reveal, about where it stands and the magnitude of the gap, there is intense follow-on interest in what best practices will close the gap. That information and insight is usually revealed in case studies as shown in Figure 1.
Current driving initiatives
Today, benchmarking is an essential ingredient...