Page 135 - DMGT524_TOTAL_QUALITY_MANAGEMENT

Total Quality Management

Notes Tie in with strategy or goals
Win top management support
Tie in with other improvements
Establish a robust infrastructure

Get the planning right
Link to key business outcomes
Link internal customers to project
Pick the right project team
Get help from support services

Get training for the project team
Benchmark internally to ‘know yourself’
Run a pilot project
Pick the right partners
Use and test a questionnaire
Plan on site visits thoroughly

Be prepared for defeatism/scepticism
Communicate your findings
Repeat the process
Finally, the key word in all benchmarking projects for me is ‘adapt’. No two organisations
are exactly the same and what works in one organisation may not do so in another. Best
practice always has to be adapted to the organisation concerned. Done well, best practice
benchmarking is a force multiplier in the performance improvement world; but done
badly it can be little more than an expensive ego massaging device.
Source: http://www.bus-ex.com/article/strategy-benchmarking

9.4.1 Reasons for Benchmarking

Continuous improvement is the most important need for any organization to remain competitive
and to satisfy changing needs of customers. Originations have to either innovate, develop new
processes, products and methods for improvement or they can also learn from the best in the
world. Thus benchmarking becomes an important requirement for every organization.
Benchmarking thus is used to measure key performance and compare it with others so that an
organization can determine where it needs to improvement and what the future opportunities
for improvement are. Sometimes benchmarking can also be used by an organization to determine
whether it is able to meet customer expectations. It can be also used to determine how an
organization is able to comply with standards. This helps the organizations to implement
quality management systems like ISO 9000. Thus in general it is the benchmarking which helps
organizations to determine areas for future improvement to remain competitive in the market.
Reasons for benchmarking are as follows:
(a) Learning from best practices from any industry and incorporating them for improvement
(b) Helping an organization to understand its current performance

(c) Encouraging for continuous improvement projects

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