In Lean
improvement, benchmarking is the regular, systematic measuring of an
organization’s own products, services or processes against those of the
recognized best practitioners in the world. The information collected about a
company’s own processes analyzed in relationship to the best-in-class practices
provides insight into the actions the company can take to improve its
performance. Indeed, benchmarking analysis can even provide metrics by which an
organization can measure its success in adding value to its business and work
processes.

The key steps
involved with benchmarking include:

Measure
current practices: Teams
determine an area where the company is underperforming. They then measure key
performance indicators to see where they currently stand.

Research
best practices: After
measuring their own performance, businesses then measure those same key metrics
in whatever operation or process they want to improve. Understand how your
process work and how other group’s processes work.

Analyze best
practices: Teams
analyze how companies achieve a high standard in the key metrics. This often
requires touring the world-class organization’s operations or meeting with
people from the organization. Collection information and data to evaluate and
compare.

Compare
performance: Teams
then compare their operations with those of the world-class organization,
finding areas where they can make improvements. These changes will help them
achieve a higher standard in the key performance metrics.

Model best
practices: Teams make
significant changes to improve current practices from what they learned. The
project team’s next step is to set goals for the improvement of the company’s
existing process. These goals can, and probably should, be stretch goals that
will result in a process even better than the other organization’s
best-in-class process.

Repeat

While benchmarking is not a perfect process if done
properly and consistently it can be the start of improving your business and
creating a more optimal learning environment.

One of the
biggest advantages of benchmarking is the extent of improvements the
organization makes by learning from the processes of others. A better and
proven process can be adapted, with suitable modifications for company
requirements, with less time invested for inventing new methodologies.
Benchmarking also uncovers new ways of improving a company’s own processes by
motivating actions learned from studying and experiencing those organizations
with best-in-class processes.