Benchmarking - Internal and External

Benchmarking is the process of comparing performance among plants and organizations whose operating and maintenance parameters have some similarity to your own.

Simply stated, Maintenance Benchmarking......

1. evaluates the actual maintenance practices of your business against the best in the business
2. provides a statistical summary of the comparisons
3. prioritises and recommends the appropriate steps for improvement.

The benefits from Benchmarking are:

• Provides an organization with information on where it stands relative to the best in the world
• Displays any gaps in performance from that of the best performers and gives targets for improvements
• Shows in the Gap Analysis the areas that require work first, assisting in prioritizing priorities for improvement
• Prompts a structured approach to improvement and thus lays the foundation for future improvements
• Provides a documented record of where the company was at when it starts the process
• It provides a solid foundation for the road map to maintenance excellence

The "watch-outs" for benchmarking are:

• Make sure you have the internal appetite for change
• Ensure confidentiality of data is maintained
• Make sure the other participants in the survey really are Best in Class…
• And their Operating and Maintenance parameters are meaningfully comparable
• Comparing to the best means you are always playing catch-up
• Data quality is always an issue - you know how much effort you put into the exercise, but what about the other participants?
• Make sure the action priorities set from the benchmarking are your priorities, not someone else's
• If you use and external company to do the benchmarking, how much do they know about t maintenance in your industry

What's the process?

1. Set up Confidentiality conditions
2. Current Situation Analysis:
• select internal participants
• understand the internal processes and critical success factors
• identify the problem areas and the high cost items
• identify the issues that impact directly on the customers - internal and external
3. Develop questionnaire for internal staff, covering
• Current Maintenance Strategies, Processes, Practices and Tactics
• Planning and Scheduling
• Inventory and Stores Management
• Budgeting and Costing
• Use of Reliability Analysis
• Maintenance Performance and Measurement
• Use of EAM/CMMS and other IS tools
• HR factors such as morale, organization
4. Select benchmarking partners.
5. Analyse Responses
6. Statistical Results - comparing with best in class and average from the survey.
7. Recommendations and Action Plan - based on benefit to the organization combined with ease of implementation.

If properly done - either among plants within an organization, or with outside organizations, Benchmarking can provide an extremely valuable tool for improvement. Improperly done, it's pretty much a waste of time.

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