Benchmarking can ignite ideas into a team, especially if teams used as the benchmark industry come from outside their own industry or "benchmarking outside-the-box" (O'Dell). One good example was Hewlett Packard who reengineered their material procurement process using ideas and a purchasing model adapted from a senior manager who join the company from the automotive industry. "Benchmarking is the practice of being humble enough to admit that someone else is better at something and wise enough to learn how to match and even surpass them at it" (O'Dell).
Benchmarking can yield great benefits in the education of executives and the realized performance improvements of manufacturing operations. In addition, benchmarking can be used to determine strategic areas of opportunity. The determination of benchmarks allows one to make a direct comparison. Any identified gaps are improvement areas.
In the rough-and-tumble marketplace of the 2000s and beyond, few organizations can afford to ignore these lessons of competitiveness. There's a simple test to determine benchmarking's applicability to an organization. Can an organization afford to stop improving? Can an organization afford to stop learning? Can an organization afford to stop competing for its position in the marketplace? Every organization strives to maintain and enhance its position over time. That is the essence of competitiveness.
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