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Discover The Coach Within You
Discover The Coach Within You One of the three basic roles of leadership is the coach or mentor. The best boss is often the best coach. (See: http://tlc-leadership.com/the_three_faces_of_leadership) In sports the coach is very conscious of his role...
How Joint Ventures Can Catapult You to Success
Substantial opportunities for increased sales and profits are missed by not seeking out and implementing joint ventures.
Strategic alliances also create value for the customer and save money and build future relationships for the partners. ...
Managing the Human Resource Project
We obtain strategic results by aligning HR mission, vision and values. The following overview highlights a macro approach to project management. Seeking a stretch assignment, such as ownership of a major corporate HR initiative, we lead our...
Secrets To Successful Publishing
Have you ever wondered what would it take to compete successfully with the “big guys” like Simon & Schuster and even get to the top of the heap? If there is such thing as a magic formula for success, then the story of Geela, the author of the...
Succss Tip: Business Plannning 101
SELLING YOU ON YOUR BUSINESS You’ve probably heard it said that a business plan is a selling document. While it is very true that your business plan will be an invaluable aid to you in selling your business to others, you may not have considered...
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Best Practice Benchmarking - The path to Excellence
Today benchmarking is an essential ingredient in strategic
planning and operational improvement. Long-range strategies if
not survival require organizations to continuously change and
adapt to the known marketplace of today and the expected market
of tomorrow to remain competitive and deliver on today's
imperatives of more, better, faster, cheaper.
BACKGROUND
From its humble beginnings as the surveyor's standard reference
mark for elevation and sometimes position (latitude and
longitude), the notion of a benchmark and benchmarking have
become almost obligatory for any organization wanting to improve
its products, services, or processes to better serve customers
and improve business results. In today's business application,
the benchmark is that performance objective which incorporates
the best practice, the epitome or standard 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.
HISTORY, WORLDWIDE REACH
In a recent article, The (Toronto) Globe and Mail ("The Ins and
Outs of Management Tools," Gordon Pitts) 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.
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 they
stand 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. There are 35 case studies among my three
books. They are a rich source of quick learning.
CURRENT DRIVING INITIATIVES
Today benchmarking is an essential ingredient in strategic
planning and operational improvement. Long-range strategies if
not survival require organizations to continuously change and
adapt to the known marketplace of today and the expected market
of tomorrow to remain competitive and deliver on today's
imperatives of more, better, faster, cheaper (Figure 2). To
energize and motivate its people, an organization must:
● believe there is a need for change, ● determine
what you want to change, and ● create a picture of how you
want to look after the change.
Read all...
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Robert C. Camp is President of the Global Benchmarking
Network, an affiliation of 20 benchmarking competency centers
around the world. For eleven years, he served on the Executive
Committee of the Council of Logistics Management and was
President in 1993.
He has over 30 years' experience in supply chain management. He
has been recognized four times by Xerox for his leadership in
benchmarking, and he is cited in The International Who's Who in
Quality.
He holds a Bachelor degree in civil engineering from Cornell
University and a Masters degree in business administration from
Cornell University - Johnson Graduate School of Management. He
earned a Doctorate in logistics and operations research from the
Pennsylvania State University. He has written many articles and
to date has 3 books on the subject.
About the author:
Contact Dr. Robert C. Camp via The Benchmarking Center |
Middle East - Read his full profile with The Knowledge
Brokers
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