Name: Granda Paz Juan Pablo

Date: 29/07/2015
NRC: 2121

INDUSTRIAL QUALITY CONTROL

Benchmarking

SUMMARY
Before more recent technology was invented, surveyors would chisel a horizontal mark in a permanent structure, like the one below,
where a tool could be placed in the indention to help create a bench mark with a level rod, helping them and future craftsmen to have a
point of reference for building. In the business world, companies use benchmarking as a point of reference as well. But instead of having
physical benchmarks carved in stone, they use benchmark reports as a way to compare themselves to others in the industry.
Benchmarking is the practice of a business comparing key metrics of their operations to other similar companies. You can also think of a
benchmark report as a dashboard on a car. It is a place you can quickly determine the health of the business. Much like a dashboard
(where you can check your speed, gas level, temperature), a benchmark report can examine things like revenue, expenses, production
amounts, employee productivity, etc.
Benchmarking occurs across all types of companies (including private, public, non-profit, for-profit) as well as industries (e.g.
technology, education, manufacturing). Many companies have positions or offices in the company that are in charge of benchmarking.
Some of the positions include:

Institutional researcher
Information officer
Data Analyst

Consultant
Business analyst
Market researcher

Companies use benchmarking as a way to help become more competitive. By looking at how other companies are doing, they
can identify areas where they are underperforming. Companies are also able to identify ways that can improve their own
operations without having to recreate the wheel. They are able to accelerate the process of change because they have models
from other companies in their industry to help guide their changes.

Types of Benchmarking

Best Practices- This is a benchmark report where companies choose to look at a company or companies that they aspire to be
like. By choosing companies that are on the leading edge of the industry, they can identify best practices that help improve their
own company.

Peer Benchmarking- This is a benchmark report where companies choose to look at other businesses very similar to themselves.
This allows companies to make sure they are staying competitive with similar businesses.

SWOT- This is a type of benchmarking report where companies gather data by looking at Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities,
and Threats to help understand their climate.

Collaborative Benchmarking- Many industries have associations they can join (e.g. The Association of Information Technology
Professionals, The National Education Association). These collaborative associations allow for members to provide information
to the association. The association can then provide benchmarking and best practice reports for the membership.

EXAMPLES

Benchmarking deals with the issue of combining a series of highfrequency data with a series of less frequent data into a consistent
time series. In business surveys, high-frequency series are typically
from monthly and quarterly surveys. These series are often the only
source of explicit information about the short-term movement in the
variables of interest. Reliable information on the overall level and the
long-term movement is typically provided by less frequent annual
surveys. From here on, the high-frequency series will be referred to as
the indicator series while the less frequent series will be called the
benchmarks.

There are two main issues at stake when benchmarking:

Preserve period to period movement of the indicator

(monthly/quarterly) series while simultaneously attaining the level of
the benchmarks (annual);

Consider the timeliness of the benchmarks.

These two issues are illustrated in Figure 1 where the quarterly indicator, the resulting benchmarked series as well as average
indicator and benchmarks series are overlayed. In a case like this where benchmarks are annual the average series represent
the annual figure from respectively the quarterly series and the benchmarks series, divided by the periodicity of the data (4, in
this case). They form two straight lines over each year a benchmark value is provided and are useful to give an overview of the
original discrepancies between the two sources.

BIBLIOGRAFA

Hank, J. (2013). Implementing the Benchmarking. SEMATECH TPM/OEE Case Study Workshop, Tempe, AZ, SEMATECH.
http://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-benchmarking-definition-types-process-examples.html