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The Benchmark

24 March, 2010 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

A friend of mine makes chicken curry for a living, he makes a lot of it, in fact he makes 2 tonnes of it an hour, he could keep most of Birmingham fed.

The problem is that when you make that much curry, invariably you drop some.  Last year he threw away well over £1 million worth.

Understandably the company he works for is concerned about the cost.  His boss’s boss has suggested that they do some benchmarking to see if £1 million of curry is a lot, or not.  They are busy looking for a curry benchmarking expert to tell them.

I wonder why they need a benchmark.  It will either tell them that “yes, £1 million is a lot of curry” or “no, £1 million in the overall scheme of curry, is nothing to worry about”.

If it is the first answer they will be precisely back where they started, there will be no progress.
If it is the second answer they will sit back on their laurels and continue to throw £1 million away every year.

Benchmarks aren’t helpful; they are static and give a false sense of security.

Let’s be honest, you don’t need to be a first rate operations analyst to realise £1 million of curry is £1 million of curry, and if they don’t want it, I’ll gladly eat some of it for them.

Curry

Image by Leshaines123

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: benchmarking, best practice, cost saving, manufacturing, measurement, process control

About the Author

James Lawther
James Lawther

James Lawther is a middle-aged, middle manager.

To reach this highly elevated position he has worked in numerous industries, from supermarket retailing to tax collecting.  He has had several operational roles, including running the night shift in a frozen pea packing factory and carrying out operational research for a credit card company.

As you can see from his C.V. he has either a wealth of experience or is incapable of holding down a job.  If the latter is true this post isn’t worth a minute of your attention.

Unfortunately, the only way to find out is to read it and decide for yourself.

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