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Should You Benchmark?

13 September, 2016 by James Lawther 1 Comment

The Benchmark

Benchmarking and best practice I spent 8 hours today learning all about benchmarking. It was fascinating… Here are some of the highlights: You should benchmark against procedures that are accepted as being the most effective. Benchmarking provides a means to compare your firm against other businesses, and identify areas where you can improve your performance The […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: benchmarking, innovation

The Dark Secrets of Benchmarking

20 May, 2013 by Dougie Cameron 8 Comments

the benchmark

This is a guest post Everyone loves a bench-marking exercise, right? It helps you understand your place in the world – where you excel, right? It shows you the gold standard, best practice, the benchmark you aspire to, right? Wrong. Bench-marking is honest and pure, so, what brings me to such a bold outburst?  Well, there are a […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: benchmarking, measurement, service differentiation

Why Service Operations are So Much Harder to Manage

9 June, 2012 by James Lawther 2 Comments

Factory

We can be a little elitist in the service industry.  We look down our noses at our manufacturing cousins.  We deal with intangibles, they deal with things, and let’s be honest, they tend to be dirty noisy things at that. But pride comes before a fall.  Here are a handful of prejudices about our uncouth […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: benchmarking, insight, manufacturing

How to Benchmark

14 April, 2012 by James Lawther 3 Comments

Benchmarking is a beguiling idea.  You look at how your competitors do things, work out what is the best practice and then implement it.  Benchmarking should create real competitive advantage. A fabulous concept, what’s not to like? So how do you benchmark?  As with all things in life, there is an easy way and a […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis, Tools & Techniques Tagged With: benchmarking, insight, video

Best Practice

12 May, 2010 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

As a rule I don’t like the idea of best practice.  It implies that perfection exists, if you are applying best practice then by definition you can’t get better.  I struggle with that idea. I think I have been proven wrong though.  Have a look at the video below.  Maybe best practice really does exist: […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: assumptions, benchmarking, best practice, capability, clarity, video

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