TABLE OF CONTENTS Continuous improvement is the process of never accepting the status quo of an organization. It is the ongoing challenge to look for incremental improvement that can be made to increase the company's competitiveness. Continuous improvement focuses on improving the company's internal capabilities and capacities. The activities must be conducted in a dynamic, ever-changing business environment. Any continuous improvement activity should be considered in the light of what impact it will have on the customer and how it helps to differentiate the company from its competitors.
One of the most effective continuous improvement tools for maintenance is benchmarking. A humorous look at benchmarking is:
Benchmarking is having enough humility to recognize that someone is better at something we do in our company and wise enough to learn how to be better at it than they are.
In reality, benchmarking is the ongoing process in which a company compares itself with another company anywhere in the world that is considered the best and then takes the knowledge gained to continually improve. Once the improvements are made, the process starts over again.
Identifying performance indicators for each functional process is essential for any benchmarking effort. This is the key to understanding the relationship between benchmarking and performance indicators. Benchmarking projects cannot be quantified unless the performance is measured and the improvements are tracked.
It is difficult to find hard measures for soft areas; utilizing tools such as process mapping and maturity grids requires considerable...
