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Investigates the link between benchmarking and operational performance using a sample of over 600 European manufacturing sites. Benchmarking is linked to the identification and adoption of improved operational practices, an increased understanding of competitive positioning, and the larger context of the “learning organization”. Shows that benchmarking may indeed contribute to improved operational performance, first through improving the firm’s understanding of its competitive position and its strengths and weaknesses, and second through providing a systematic process for effecting change. Learning organizations were more likely to benchmark than other firms.

The economic contribution that small firms make is being increasingly recognised. Consequently robust strategic benchmarks for small firms must be extremely valuable not just for the firms themselves but also for the wider economic community. The Competitive Analysis Model (CAM) is a new approach to the strategic benchmarking of small firms. Currently this model comprises 893 firms on which are held 320 separate data items. These data items are used to provide individual firm reports so that participating firms can benchmark their performance in terms of measures such as: growth rates, internal performance measures, external performance measures and strategic priorities. The benchmarks are provided in two major manners: sectoral comparisons so that a firm can benchmark its performance with others of a similar size in the same industry sub‐sector and cross‐sectional comparisons so that a firm can benchmark its performance with others of similar size irrespective of the industry in which they operate. This article describes the operation of CAM and illustrates its operations through a typical CAM report.

To provide the basis for the development of a specific benchmarking methodology for the foundry industry.

The methodology was developed with the support of the Portuguese Foundry Association (APF). The project was structured in two stages: developing the model for the performance assessment (including performance indicators specially designed for the foundry companies); and conducting a pilot benchmarking exercise in order to validate the model. Both stages received the contribution of eight relevant national foundries.

Provides information about expectations of the benchmarking partners group. Make available a specific benchmarking model for assessing the foudries' performance based on critical factors. Provides foundry‐oriented indicators. Confirms that benchmarking is a time‐consuming tool, demanding continuous commitment of the top‐managers.

A limitation of the study is the number of benchmarking partners (eight foundries). The statistical analysis of the results based on this small sample was not practicable, preventing the definition of the presumed causal relations between improvement practices and performance outcomes.

The benchmarking model is now available at the APF. From now on, this institution can provide its members with a tool for promoting the co‐operation among companies and to enhance and enlarge significantly the available information about this sector. This activity will, certainly, help to improve organisations' performance, upgrading the competitiveness of the metalcasting industry in Portugal.

This paper helps the development of benchmarking in the metalcasting industry in which the number of published studies is very limited.

We examine the use of relative performance evaluation (RPE), asymmetry in pay for skill/luck, and compensation benchmarking for a sample of firms involved in a spinoff. The spinoff affects firm characteristics that influence the use of the identified compensation practices. We test for differences in the compensation practices for the pre- and post-spinoff firms. We find that RPE is used for post-spinoff CEOs, but not pre-spinoff CEOs. Post-spinoff CEOs are also paid asymmetrically for luck where they are rewarded for good luck but not punished for bad luck. Both pre- and post-spinoff CEOs receive similar levels of compensation benchmarking. The study provides additional evidence on factors that influence compensation practices. Our spinoff sample allows us to examine how compensation practices are affected by changes in firm characteristics while keeping other determinants of compensation constant (i.e., the board and, in many cases, the CEO). Our findings contribute to the understanding of how the identified compensation practices are used.

Recently, benchmarking has become a common approach to optimize production processes by comparing certain aspects of a company with its competitors. However, one of the biggest challenges is not only to define suitable benchmarking topics and partners, to gather and statistically evaluate characteristic data, but to derive concrete measures to interpret the results, i.e. to overcome the revealed weaknesses. The purpose of this paper is to present an already implemented and successfully used functional benchmarking methodology for production performance of small and medium batch size processes, that is currently extended by using a knowledge base for reasoning strategies to semi‐automatically support the interpretation of the extracted statistical data.

A comprehensive approach is presented to develop a new model for the evaluation of a small to medium‐sized enterprise's production performance using an existing European database called BETT Benchmark.

The knowledge‐based concept enables sophisticated interpretation strategies to be used on an already existing base of real company data. The decisive point of the approach presented is to map production variables on room for improvement by taking varying parameters into account.

The proposed tool is a valuable tool that takes advantage of a statistically firmed analysis of a substantial database and combines it with the comprehensive expertise of experienced specialists in the field of performance assessment.

Environmental turbulence including rapid changes in technology and markets has resulted in the need for new approaches to performance measurement and benchmarking. There is a need for studies that attempt to measure and benchmark upstream, leading or developmental aspects of organizations. Therefore, the aim of this paper is twofold. The first is to conduct an in‐depth case analysis of lead performance measurement and benchmarking leading to the further development of a conceptual model derived from the extant literature and initial survey data. The second is to outline future research agendas that could further develop the framework and the subject area.

A multiple case analysis involving repeated in‐depth interviews with managers in organisational areas of upstream influence in the case organisations.

It was found that the effect of external drivers for lead performance measurement and benchmarking was mediated by organisational context factors such as level of progression in business improvement methods. Moreover, the legitimation of the business improvement methods used for this purpose, although typical, had been extended beyond their original purpose with the development of bespoke sets of lead measures.

Examples of methods and lead measures are given that can be used by organizations in developing a programme of lead performance measurement and benchmarking.

There is a paucity of in‐depth studies relating to the theory and practice of lead performance measurement and benchmarking in organisations.

A product or service usually has multiple measurable characteristics, and its performance on different measures may vary and may change over time. Multi-criterion and multi-period performance benchmarking presents a challenge for management to determine performance gaps among comparable products or services. The purpose of this paper is to propose a new performance benchmarking method to address this challenge.

The author develop this method by formulating two benchmarking functions: a differentiation function based on Shewhart average and standard deviation charts to distinguish the performance of products or services on a single measure, and a categorization function to classify each product’s or service’s overall performance across all measures. By systematically removing the lowest-performing products or services from comparison, the author use these functions iteratively to detect performance gaps.

Using this method, the author find performance gaps in each of three benchmarking applications of airports, hotels, and minivans, although a number of performance gaps are not obvious from the raw data.

This benchmarking study focuses on the quantifiable outcome performance of products and services.

This benchmarking method is generic and applicable to most products and services. It is robust not only for discovering performance gaps, but also for providing useful insights for managers to prioritize improvement efforts on individual performance measures.

The novelty of this benchmarking method lies in that it can not only find the “best overall” products or services for all performance measures, but can also pinpoint the “best-in-class” products or services as well as performance gaps for each performance measure. In addition, this paper presents several original ideas for performance benchmarking, including: using the control limits of Shewhart control charts to categorize performance gaps, systematically removing the lowest-performing products or services from comparison for the purpose of detecting hidden performance gaps, and using symbolic expressions to integrate benchmarking results from all measures and to show all performance gaps intuitively.

This paper demonstrates a multi-criteria analytic hierarchy process (AHP) framework for evaluating and benchmarking maintenance performance in the select agro-based industry.

Initially, 20 maintenance practices (criteria) have been identified after a detailed literature review and discussion with the agro-based industry (sugar, textile and dairy industry) executives. These are then grouped into six maintenance management areas referred to as group criteria. The multi-criteria methodology consists of three steps: criteria identification, hierarchical modeling and data collection and maintenance performance evaluation, and benchmarking. The multi-criteria methodology proposed in this work facilitates two ways of carrying out benchmarking: (1) within the agro-based industry and (2) between the agro-based industry. The methodology has been explained by taking a case example of 45 agro-based industries (18 dairy, 13 sugar and 14 textile) from the western region of India. The sensitivity analysis of the model has been performed to ascertain the robustness of the results.

There is a difference in the maintenance performance across the agro-based industries due to different maintenance practices perceived differently.

The outcome of the model is mainly given by the judgments of the agro-based industry executives. It is also sensitive to any change in the relative importance to the evaluation criteria or the perception about the maintenance performance.

The study contributes in identifying the weakness, if any, by comparing the agro-based industry under investigation with the benchmark factory at three levels, namely, overall performance (factory level), group criteria (maintenance management area level) and criteria (maintenance practice level) allowing further improvement.

The methodology assists in better decision-making and in improving maintenance performance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the consistency of benchmarking performance measures and to investigate the impact of organizational size and managerial positions on the deployment of strategic and tactical benchmarking performance measures.

A set of eight hypotheses was used to examine the consistency of the benchmarking performance measures and the impact of organizational size and managerial positions on selection of strategic and tactical benchmarking performance measures. A questionnaire-based survey data were used to test the hypotheses. The target population was manufacturing firms in Midwestern USA; the sample covers organizations in a variety of industries. Out of 91 completed surveys received, 84 surveys were usable resulting in a response rate of 17 percent.

The paper found evidence of misalignment between organizational goals and objectives and proactive development of organizational core capabilities. The result also indicates that managers with high-level positions as well as managers from large organizations placed higher emphasis on strategic benchmarking performance measures.

Research is general and not industry specific.

Effective performance measurement is a critical element of organizational success. It requires a thorough understanding of organizational strategy and deployment of the strategy into consistent sub-strategies.

For effective benchmarking, managers must develop a complete understanding of their own business strategy and choose long-term and short-term benchmarking performance measures that are consistent with organizational strategy.

In global scenario, many organizations own supply chains, which operate in different countries. The performance of these supply chains, owned by the same organization must be same if they operate in countries with similar economical, political, and social conditions. In this paper, an effort has been made to propose a methodology for the internal benchmarking to reduce the variability in performance among supply chains of same focal firm. The proposed methodology of internal benchmarking for assessment of supply chain performance demonstrated through a case supply chain.

A case of global supply chains is presented in which a focal firm owns three supply chains operating in three different countries. In order to assess and improve the performance of these supply chains relative to each other, a benchmarking methodology is proposed.

An extensive use of performance value analysis (PVA) and strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis provided good diagnosis of supply chains. This analysis can be very useful in leveraging the supply chain drivers of various supply chains belonging to same focal organization and hence bring performance of all the supply chains at the same performance level.

According to the authors' knowledge, there is no paper in the literature, which discusses the application of PVA and SWOT analysis for internal benchmarking in supply chain management and it is believed that it will be useful for supply chain managers to apply such tools to lead global development in their supply chains.