Page 147 - The Handbook for Quality Management a Complete Guide to Operational Excellence

134 I n t e g r a t e d P l a n n i n g B e n c h m a r k i n g 135

After a list of potential candidates is compiled, the next step is to choose
the best three to five targets. A candidate that looked promising early in the
process might be eliminated later for any number of reasons, including
poor performance, a lack of commitment to sharing information or prac-
tices, low availability, or questionable value of information (Vaziri, 1992).
As the benchmarking process evolves, the characteristics of the most
desirable candidates will be continually refined. This occurs as a result of
a clearer understanding of your organization’s key quality characteristics
and critical success factors and an improved knowledge of the market-
place and other play ers. This knowledge and the resulting actions tremen-
dously strengthen an organization.

Why Benchmarking Efforts Fail
The causes of failed benchmarking projects are the same as those for other
failed projects (DeToro, 1995):

• Lack of sponsorship. A team should submit to management a one- to
four-page benchmarking project proposal that describes the
project, its objectives, and potential costs. If the team can’t gain
approval for the project or get a sponsor, it makes little sense to
proceed with a project that’s not understood or appreciated or that
is unlikely to lead to corrective action when completed.
• Wrong people on team. Individuals involved in benchmarking
should own or work in the process under review. It’s useless for a
team to address problems in business areas that are unfamiliar or
where the team has no control or influence.
• Teams don’t understand their work completely. If the benchmarking
team didn’t map, flowchart, or document its work process, and if
it didn’t benchmark with organizations that also documented their
process es, there can’t be an effective transfer of techniques. The
intent in every benchmarking project is for a team to understand
how its process works and compare it with another company’s
process at a detailed level. The exchange of process steps is essential
for improved performance.
• Teams take on too much. Broad issues quickly become unmanageable
and must be broken into smaller, more manageable projects that
can be approached logically. A suggested approach is to create a
functional flowchart of an entire area, such as production or
marketing, and identify its processes. Criteria can then be used to
select a subprocess to be benchmarked that would best contribute
to the organization’s objectives.
• Lack of long-term management commitment. Since managers aren’t as
familiar with specific work issues as their employees, they tend to

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