For any practitioner wanting to establish best practice in a wide variety of business areas, BENCHMARKING FOR BEST PRACTICE uses recent case studies of individual companies and industry-wide quality schemes to show how and why implementation has succeeded. It is also an ideal textbook on the application of TQM since it describes concepts, covers definitions and illustrates the applications with first-hand examples.

All the necessary tools to be successful.

With growing demands for increased operational efficiency and process improvement in organizations of all sizes, more and more companies are turning to benchmarking as a means of setting goals and measuring performance against the products, services and practices of other organizations that are recognized as leaders. The Benchmarking Book is an indispensable guide to process improvement through benchmarking, providing managers, practitioners and consultants with all the information needed to carry out effective benchmarking studies. Covering everything from essential theory to important considerations such as project management and legal issues, The Benchmarking Book is the ideal step-by-step guide to assessing and improving your company’s processes and performance through benchmarking.

Over the past decade, companies have redirected their maintenance operational focus from internal cost-cutting to profit-maximization. This approach is referred to as profit centered maintenance. Peters provides maintenance supervisors and managers with a benchmarking/best practices road-map called the Maintenance Operations Scoreboard. The Scoreboard will allow maintenance managers to: a) determine and quantify benefits and savings, b) improve craft productivity and c) define a strategy to improve efficiency and productivity. These things are at the heart of a successful Profit Centered Maintenance organization. The author-devised Maintenance Operations Scoreboard is used to perform over 200 maintenance evaluations in over 5,000 profit centered maintenance organizations. For example, at Honda of America, it was used extensively to direct maintenance strategy. It was later translated into Japanese for presentation to key Japanese executives. Another excellent example is Boeing Commercial Aircraft Inc. Boeing combined elements from this same Scoreboard with their company-wide maintenance goals to develop ‘The Boeing Scoreboard for Maintenance Excellence.’ Over 60 facility maintenance work units, at region, group and team levels, are evaluated at on-site visits using the Scoreboard criteria.

Written by Dr. Robert Camp, universally regarded as the founding father of the benchmark process, this bestseller is quite simply the definitive reference on the topic. Camp guides readers through the historic ten-step benchmarking process that he developed while at Xerox. This process is credited with reviving that company when it was floundering in 1979. Camp presents other examples of the process, including its dramatic application to L.L. Bean. He uses these examples to show managers how to relate benchmarking to their own circumstances and then provides them with expert strategy and tips so that they can efficiently and easily launch their own quest for best performance.

Benchmarking is a powerful tool for improvement. It is one of the fastest-growing techniques for quality and performance improvement and attracts massive attention. Now, more than ever, there is a clear need for straightforward guidelines to help companies make the most of benchmarking. This book addresses that need.

As one of the titles in the American Productivity & Quality Center's Passport to Success series, Benchmarking provides readers with a comprehensive understanding of what it takes to achieve benchmarking success. Based on years of research into the practices of leading organizations, this book, written by experienced APQC benchmarkers, highlights various types of benchmarking and APQC's benchmarking methodology. Readers can track their own progress and identify benchmarking landmarks. Supported by examples of best practices and tips from actual practitioners, it examines preparation and planning, participation, data collection, data analysis, and measurement. This 86-page book is retail priced at $19.95. An excerpt from Benchmarking: "The first vitally important step in a successful benchmarking initiative is clearly defining the objectives and the desired outcomes. While benchmarking cannot eliminate competition, its outcomes can include information on how to redesign processes to make your organization more competitive, improve quality, reduce costs and cycle time, and increase the satisfaction levels of external and internal customers. To define your specific objectives and desired outcomes, ask the individuals involved in deciding to benchmark to answer the following questions: What are we trying to accomplish?; What is the current state?"