Benchmarking Overview

It has been my experience that to make profitable process changes you must first understand where you are and where you want to go within your process. How you measure and what you measure are always the two biggest questions to ask in production and labor management. Supply chain operations within an organization should be constantly reviewed to identify where improvements can be made or deficiencies eliminated. One method to help do this is to perform a series of benchmarking tests on their supply chain processes. Benchmarking or goal setting allows a company to assess the opportunities they may have for improving a number of areas in their supply chain including productivity, inventory accuracy, shipping accuracy, storage density and bin-to-bin time. The benchmarking process can provide a company some estimate of the benefits achieved by the implementation of any improvements.

Benchmarking is the process whereby an assessment of an act or performance is measured by some means, whether this is by a measurement of time, value or quantity. A benchmarking project will gather the assessments and develop a plan of action to improve the process that was assessed.

Look for in future Blogs:

Types of Benchmarking, Internal Benchmarking, External Benchmarking and Components of Benchmarking. 
By Bud Hayes
Waller & Associates, LLC
www.WallerAssoc.com