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INTRODUCTION
The two major duties of an engineer in a business concern are designing/implementing efficient new production centres and improving the performance of existing centres. He/she does this by creating the best combinations of manufacturing/service resources in a temporal order to meet or surpass customer expectations.
Benchmarking is a re-engineering/continuous improvement technique brought to the limelight in the last three years mainly by the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) in the USA. Its primary objective is process quality improvement. Hence, it is only natural that engineers will use this tool for process re-engineering. There are indications that this is indeed happening. Many progressive companies are now using benchmarking to assess their posture against competitors and learn from others for continuous improvements in business operations and processes.
DEFINITIONS
The definition of benchmarking has changed since its original use in surveying which referred to a permanently marked object and point of reference for assessing land geometry. Modern deployment of the word makes reference to a standard by which others may be measured[1]. In 1979, Xerox redefined benchmarking as: "continuous process of measuring our products, services, and practices against our toughest competition or those companies recognized as world leaders". Camp, author of an American Society for Quality Control (ASQC)-published book on benchmarking[2], defines it as: "...the search of industry best practices that lead to superior performance".
Other companies have offered slightly different definitions. Ford sees it as a structured approach for learning from others and applying that knowledge. 3M defines it as a tool used to search for enablers that allow a company to perform at a best-in-class level in a business process. AT&T Benchmarking Group views it as: "the continuous process of measuring your current business operations and comparing them with those of best-in-class companies. Application of the knowledge gained from a benchmarking study provides a foundation for building operational plans to meet and surpass industry best practices."
BENCHMARKING PROCESS
As implied in the various definitions offered, benchmarking is a continuous process (Figure 1). (Figure 1 omitted) It follows the P-D-C-A (plan, do, check, act) cycle. The plan phase focuses on the various up-front decisions such as the selection of functions/processes to benchmark and the type of benchmarking study on which to embark. In do, one...