Why does benchmarking fail

It may be better than yours, but if adopted, it still leaves your organization far below best-in-class. For the same amount of effort, an organization could have made it to the top. Organizations should identify the best and go for it. Only if the absolute best will not participate can taking second-best be justified. Second-best should be used only if it is significantly superior to the process in question.

A frequent cause of failure in benchmarking is that teams get bogged down in collecting endless data and put too much emphasis on the numbers. Both data collection and the actual numbers are important, of course, but the most important issue is the process itself. Unless the team has been deeply involved in the process, the practical knowledge to successfully adapt and implement it back home may be lacking.

Nothing will break up a benchmarking partnership quicker than insensitivity. If you fail to observe protocol and common courtesy in all transactions, your organization runs the risk of being cut off. This issue keeps coming up because it is so critical to success at all stages of the benchmarking activity.

If this team contacts other successful companies and discusses what has worked for them, they are more likely to come back with several viable alternatives to try out after applying strong analytical and logical rigour to the options.

The likelihood of success is much higher for this team of emotionally invested employees. Next time you embark on a benchmarking project, remember to take care of the Emotion-Intuition-Logic sequence. Email sinha. Why does benchmarking often fail?

Mind over matter Emotion — Intuition — Logic In my opinion, improvement projects are best conceptualised, owned and implemented by people who are passionate about their business and want it to succeed despite innumerable challenges in their competitive environment. The power of an emotionally invested team If we truly want our benchmarking efforts to succeed, there is a better way.

Related Articles Agile forecasting August 07, Forecasting in Replenishment Supply Chains July 08, Dancing to the drumbeats May 04, Is panic buying really bad? Internal process of the project understanding is very necessary for the six sigma team. Six sigma efforts will definitely fail if Six Sigma team does not understand the internal processes or management does not support them on regular basis. Team should focus on area of concern. Due to following reasons six sigma benchmarking efforts fails in many companies: Lack of understanding: Lack of understanding of internal processes, vision, mission and goal of the organization is the key factor for Six Sigma benchmarking failures.

Management must align the activitie Less. Management must align the activities with the mission statement of the organization otherwise all efforts will be wasted.

Document Control. Avoiding the Crisis du Jour. Case Study: QS Process Improvement through Root Cause Analysis. The causes of failed benchmarking projects are the same as those for other failed projects DeToro, :. The best way of addressing these issues is to prevent their occurrence through carefully planning and managing the project from the outset. This list can be used as a checklist to evaluate project plans; if the plans don't clearly preclude these problems, then the plans are not complete.

For more on benchmarking project management, see also:. Getting Started with Benchmarking.