The Benefits of Internal Benchmarking

Benchmarking is an integral part of any continuous improvement strategy. There are typically three types of benchmarking: cross-industry, competitive and internal. Cross-industry benchmarking looks at similar processes in different industries and often delivers the biggest breakthroughs because it helps companies identify processes and systems not widely used in their industries. One example is Southwest Airlines benchmarking NASCAR pit crews’ performance. Competitive benchmarking looks at data from competitors. The challenge is that direct competitors are not likely to share at the level possible with a cross-industry benchmarking exercise, and given the similarity of processes, the best-case improvement is often just being as good as your best competitor.

Internal benchmarking can take two forms. In the first form, processes and systems are evaluated against Lean manufacturing standards to target areas of improvement. In the second form, different facilities of a company are benchmarked to find improvements based on differences in processes and systems.

SigmaTron is increasing its use of internal benchmarking. Its facilities each focus on the industries and customer requirements that they serve.  This article discusses the methodologies used and includes recent of examples of unexpected benefits in terms of knowledge transfer. Read the full article here.