Xerox was the first company to use benchmarking. In the early 1980s, companies such as Minolta, Ricoh, and Canon entered the photocopying and printing market.
These companies had much lower costs than Xerox and gambling data brazil the problem became apparent.
To solve this problem, Xerox analyzed methods, processes and materials from the Japanese company Fuji.
The results showed a significant gap in all the sectors studied. They also indicated that productivity needed to grow by 18% per year for five years to catch up with the competition.
Xerox set new goals and different KPIs to track the improvements it would adopt.
Starbucks
benchmarking
Starbucks also initiated a benchmarking process that yielded significant benefits. The main aspect of this company's business model is the preparation time of its coffees. To study how to increase preparation speed, Starbucks focused on a leading company: Toyota. This company is an example of time optimization in relation to the manufacturing of its products. After an exhaustive analysis, it was found that 30% of the time spent preparing coffee was lost due to the time the employee spent selecting the ingredients.
Once the problem was identified, Starbucks implemented an action plan: redesigning the workspace, arranging utensils differently, and getting faster, more efficient machines.
After implementing the improvements, a follow-up study showed a 20% improvement in coffee brewing time.
Conclusion
Benchmarking has become one of the pillars of planning in many companies. Large international corporations have entire departments dedicated to evaluating their performance relative to their competitors.