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Developing Your Mission
"The best Leader is one who knows how to pick good people to do what he or she wants done and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it." - Heidi Richards - Developing Your Mission Mission statements describe the...
Home Business Grants
Depending on what kind of business you're planning to start, you
might be able to get a home business grant. These grants are
usually government-issued. They are, effectively, 'free money' -
as long as you use the money for what you say you're...
ISG expands to include deNovo Bank consulting
ISG expands to include deNovo bank consulting ISG (//www.isg-telecom.com")expands its horizons to now include a deNovo Bank Consulting division. Since 1996 ISG has been known worldwide for it project management expertise in the telecommunications...
Operational Excellence for Wholesale Distributors
Executive Summary
Formula For Success & An Operationally Excellent Profile
Executive Summary
Do you have a vision and desire to transform your operating environment into that of an operationally excellent distribution...
Public Relations – Defining Your Organization from the Inside Out
What do your customers say about your company?
Would you let your major competitor control your sales strategy?
Public relations is an inevitable consequence of being in business. Whether you like it or not, your corporate image evolves...
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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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