Benchmarking: A Quantitative and Qualitative Look at Southwest Airlines and British Airways In today 's competitive marketplace, all firms are seeking ways to improve their overall performance. One such method of improvement, recently adopted by many firms, is benchmarking. Benchmarking is a technique used to evaluate internal business processes. "In this analysis, managers determine the firm 's critical processes and outputs, baseline those processes, then compare the performance of each process against a standard outside the industry" (Bounds, Yorks, Adams, & Ranney 1994). To effectively improve a business process to world-class quality, managers must find a firm that is recognized as a global leader, not just the industry …show more content…
These processes are not performed in isolation. The end result relies heavily on the satisfactory completion of all processes and the communication of all functional areas involved. By viewing these processes as a whole, management can identify process inefficiencies. These inefficiencies may include delays or queuing at process bottlenecks, lack of control or checking, or places responsibility for process activities is not clear. The Total Quality Management model is limited in its scope of improvement. Total Quality Management establishes targets for performance rather than focusing on continuous improvement. This perspective is to narrow because it fails to consider the overall improvement process. To be effective, management must incorporate all aspects of the business into a dynamic improvement process. The fourth key to benchmarking is systematic external benchmarking. Once management has realized the importance of internal business processes and world-best practices, it is their responsibility to combine these two themes. Management must systematically examine its internal practices and performance in comparison to external benchmarks. The last key is benchmarking as a survival technique. It may effectively save a business from declaring bankruptcy. However, benchmarking should be used in organizations regardless of financial or economic status. Internal benchmarking is one of the most important aspects of benchmarking.
Once the benchmark has been identified, then the company needs to implement the methods and practices and tailor to their own specific
* Total quality management (TQM): This model is concerned with the performance of all processes in an organisation, and the products and services that are the outcomes of those processes. It seeks continuous improvement and will involve everyone in the quest for quality.
Successful organizations continuously strive to improve the processes they have in place. Process improvement leads to better quality control, higher efficiencies and lower costs. In order to implement a process improvement plan, it is necessary to collect and analyze data from the process. In this paper, I present an analysis of the metric data collected for the process I identified during week #1. As part of the analysis, the control and confidence limits are calculated, as well as other relevant statistics. With this information, a process improvement
Utilizing the benchmark process to determine best practices will help key decision makers in developing streamlined production processes. Competitive intelligence and analysis will help it to formulate ways to stay ahead of its competitors.
The company can also use a unit within its own process, with exceptional performance levels, as a yardstick for other units. These types of practices can help the company formulate goals and targets for performance (Slack et al, 2008). It can also be achieved by methodically measuring internal services, products and processes against those employed by competitors. Thus, Custom Molds stands to learn a lot from other companies through benchmarking. It can also help the company identify key processes and bridge the disjunction between the company’s actual state and its expected state (Boxwell, 1994). It’s also an expert method for identifying the bottlenecks which have been plaguing Custom Molds. For instance, the company’s competitors might be able to get products to customers on time. If management were to investigate the flow of their own processes [Figure 1-Question 2], then they would realise that too much time is being wasted waiting on raw materials to be delivered before starting work. A possible solution might be to hold higher raw material inventory, so that preliminary processes can begin, while waiting for other materials to be delivered. This can help reduce lead time for orders. In this way, the benchmarking technique will present the company with new opportunities to evolve with the market. However, the process can be expensive and time consuming because it might
Best Practices Benchmarking is an effective device to increase aggressive understanding and gives "confirm based" perspectives of execution all product and organization lifecycles. All in all, it is the utilization of what is found out in benchmarking that conveys the checked and amazing outcomes so regularly noted. We supplement the traditional metrics-focused approach with an investigation of why and how practices deliver extraordinary outcomes. Numerous industry pioneers and organizations utilize benchmarking tool to recognize the holes in the process to enhance and upgrade execution. We should start with internal benchmarking. In its most straightforward simplest form, inside benchmarking
The objective of this research paper is to describe how the 21St Century utilized concepts , such as corporate social responsibility in relation with triple bottom line, to shift the airline industry into becoming a forward-thinking industry embedding sustainability into their core of business operations to create shared value for business and society. I will define corporate social responsibility and areas of social responsibility in the airline industry at the beginning of the paper and proceed with how it ties into the bottom line concept. Next, I will give brief examples of airlines such as JetBlue Airways, and British Airways how they apply these concepts into their mission. In conclusion, I will express my own thoughts about how different generations based their purchases and career decisions on these concepts.
Business process improvements and cost reduction strategies work together eliminating waste, increasing productivity, maximizing effectiveness, and reducing labor costs. Each action your organization takes to produce a product or service is a process. Use employee feedback in addition to cost reduction in order to simplify, merge, and remove wasteful processes that are not profitable.
Benchmarking is a powerful tool used to promote continuous improvement of an organization. It enables the decision-makers to realize how much improvement is required to achieve satisfactory performance. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) has defined benchmarking as “a measurement tool for monitoring the impact of governance, management and clinical and logistical functions” (as cited in Ettorchi-Tardy, Levif & Michel, 2012). There are four different kinds of benchmarking: internal, external or competitive, functional and generic or best practice. Also, there are several benefits of using benchmarking within healthcare organizations such as improving the quality of patient care, encouraging accountability among providers, improving productivity, yielding greater efficiency, meeting accreditation requirements, etc.
Benchmarking encompasses evaluation of other company’s business processes and embracing them to improve performance, search for innovative ideas, and gain a competitive advantage. Benchmarking establishes a rational method for setting performance goals, and gaining market leadership and a broader, more accurate organizational management perspective. The process is according on what they best are doing; it take the emotion out of arguments about the need to change. Also, the process contributes vastly to the proper and efficient functioning of organizational and business information needs. Therefore,
Total quality management focuses on several aspects such as Continuous improvement and the Customers to improve the quality of the products. Ford Company has in place a strong set of values, norms, and artifacts which it strongly enforces. The mission statement for the company is based on a simple phrase, “One Ford: One team, one plan, one goal.” The company vision is, “To become the world’s leading consumer company for automotive products and services.” (Haas-kotzegger, Schlegelmilch, & Ambos, 2013) Both these company philosophies give the company a good favor towards the consumers.
Total Quality Management (TQM) is an improvement tool that is widely used in many companies. It consists of many aspects including Managing people as well as business processes in order to maintain customer satisfaction. With TQM, Businesses starts to do the right thing from the start and to ensure zero error. Therefore, it is important to learn the principle of TQM and how it acts in organizations with its advantages and disadvantages.
Introduction - Total quality management (TQM) has been defined as ‘continuous improvement of every production output whether it be a product or a service, by removing inefficient variations and by improving the backbone of the work process’. International managers like their domestic counterparts have found that incorporating the notion of total quality management into their management process and style can give the competitive advantage.
According to “Management: A Practical Introduction”, Total Quality Management is defined as a comprehensive approach dedicated to the continuous improvement of quality, training, and customer satisfaction. There are four components to Total Quality Management, and they include making continuous improvement a priority, getting every employee involved, listen to and learn from customers and employees, and using accurate standards to identify and eliminate problems (Kimiki Williams 528). For companies that use the Total Quality Management approach, these values will often times be defined in their core values and principles, and the specifics of these values may be different from company to company. As
Process improvement is a fundamental to business management. If you run an operation (and all businesses do, one way or another) you are reliant on two things: