Benchmarking Best Practices in Maintenance Management
This concise and easy to use book provides a framework for managing maintenance with options that allow decision makers to select the most successful ways to manage their businesses.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Benchmarking Best Practices in Maintenance Management
Chapter 2: Benchmarking Fundamentals
Benchmarking. Best practices. Competitive analysis. All these terms are used in business today. But are they just buzzwords, or do the words have real meaning? Are they useful tools that can be used to improve business practices today? Let s begin with some definitions.
The Language of Benchmarking
Benchmarking and Best Practices
Xerox Corporation defines benchmarking as follows:
The search for industry best practices which lead to superior performance.
To understand this definition completely, we must first be clear what is meant by best practices. They are practices that enable a company to become a leader in its respective marketplace. However, Best Practices are not the same for all companies. For example, if a company is in a declining market, in which the pressures are to maximize profits with a fixed sales volume, one set of best practices might allow market leadership. However, if the company is in a growth mode with profits dictated by gaining rapid market share, a different set of best practices would be appropriate. Therefore, best is determined by business conditions, not by a fixed set of business practices.
The second key term in the Xerox definition is superior performance. Many companies use benchmarking to be as good as their competitors. However, a company can gain very little if its goal for benchmarking is merely to achieve status quo. Benchmarking is a continuous improvement tool that is to be used by companies that are striving to achieve superior performance in their respective marketplace.
An alternative definition...
Copyright Industrial Press Inc. 2004 under license agreement with Books24x7
