APPAREL QUALITY MANAGEMENT – II

ASSIGNMENT - 1

Topic  University of Exeter Benchmarking case study

Submitted To: Submitted By:

Mr. Sumit Kumar Bhaskar Raj

Asstt. Professor (BFT/17/1072)

NIFT BBSR
 CONTENT

1. INTRODUCTION.

2. BENEFITS OF BENCHMARKING.

3. TYPES OF BENCHMARKING.

4. CASE STUDY ON BENCHMARKING.

5. REFERENCES.
 INTRODUCTION

Benchmarking is a process of measuring the performance of a company’s products,

services, or processes against those of another business considered to be the best in
the industry. The point of benchmarking is to identify internal opportunities for
improvement. By studying companies with superior performance, breaking down what
makes such superior performance possible, and then comparing those processes to
how the company’s business operates and implement changes that will yield
significant improvements.

Benchmarking is a process of industrial research that enables managers to perform

company-to-company comparisons of processes and practices to identify the “best of
the best” and to attain a level of superiority or competitive advantage.

The Japanese word dantotsu—striving to be the best of the best—captures the

essence of benchmarking.

It is a positive, proactive process to change operations in a structured fashion to

achieve superior performance. The purpose of benchmarking is to gain competitive
advantage.

Definition: -“The continuous process of measuring products, services, and practices

against the company’s toughest competitors or those companies renowned as industry
leaders.” (Camp 1994).
 BENEFITS OF BENCHMARKING

 Competitive Analysis: By identifying areas you wish to improve on in your

business and benchmarking your existing performance against competitors,
your business can strive to enhance your execution tenfold. Using
benchmarking this way has allowed businesses to gain strategic advantages
over competitors and grow industry averages.

 Monitor Performance: Benchmarking involves looking at current trends in data

and projecting future trends depending on what you aim to achieve. In order to
know you have been successful, benchmarking needs to be a continuous
process. Monitoring performance is an inherent characteristic of it.

 Continuous Improvement: As well as monitor performance, continuous

improvement is an essential attribute of benchmarking. This is because the aim
of benchmarking is to improve a certain element of a business. This
improvement should not merely be something that improves once and is
forgotten, but something that improves over time and is continuous.

 Planning and Goal Setting: Once benchmarking has been carried out, goals
and performance metrics are set in order to improve performance. These goals
are new, more competitive targets for a company but they must be achievable.
If goals are unrealistic to achieve teams become demotivated and goals are
destined to remain unfulfilled.
 TYPES OF BENCHMARKING

 Internal benchmarking is a comparison of a business process to a similar

process inside the organization.

 Competitive benchmarking is a direct competitor-to-competitor

comparison of a product, service, process, or method.

 Functional benchmarking is a comparison to similar or identical practices

within the same or similar functions outside the immediate industry.

 Generic benchmarking broadly conceptualizes unrelated business

processes or functions that can be practiced in the same or similar ways
regardless of the industry.
 University of Exeter Benchmarking case study

Exeter University's Vice-Chancellor & Chief Executive, Professor Sir Steve Smith, saw in-
depth intelligence on Exeter performance compared with its competitors as an absolute priority
right from his arrival in the University in 2002. He wanted Exeter to understand very clearly
what the University's strategic strengths and weaknesses at that time were, relative to
competitor universities, as a foundation to determining Exeter's future.

Benchmarking at Exeter is not a means to imitate what others have done, it is an important
source of the intelligence informing University planning. For Exeter, evaluating performance
in comparison with other institutions gave four conditions important for long-term success:

 A better understanding of what could be achieved, discipline by discipline - confirming

where performance had to be improved if the University were to reach its ambitions -
in short, guiding the University on where to concentrate its efforts
 Supporting distinctive contributions - benchmarking can lead to the risk of imposing
identikit solutions onto quite diverse entities - more 'granular' benchmarking and
discussion leads to supporting distinctive contributions by College/discipline, provided
they add up to overall strategic sense
 A well-informed competitive culture - clarity on how well we are doing compared to
others helps motivate staff efforts to do their best and outperform their competitors
 A straightforward way of tracking and communicating progress - in absolute terms to
the University's own previous best, and comparing the University's trajectory to the
competition

Universities have such breadth of interests and operations that it can prove difficult to focus
on what matters most. The process to confirm what matters most, and how to measure
performance in those areas has been for Exeter crucial to the delivery of the University's
strategy. Exeter has ten Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), connecting to the core strategies,
and these KPIs have remained largely unchanged over the past five years.
The selection of benchmark comparators can be contentious, but Exeter selected those seen
as competing in the range 5-15 in UK league tables (taking these as a rough proxy for overall
reputation and performance). A selection, 12 in all, from Russell Group and 94 Group
universities forms the University's competitor group.
Again, this peer group is largely unchanged to help maintain comparisons over time and
indeed to keep the overhead down.

League tables do form an important part of the University's benchmarking approach, and do
have a strong external influence, but it is the University's own KPIs that are the primary
concern for Council, the Vice-Chancellor and his Executive Group, and the University's
academic Colleges.

There are certain 'technical basics' which Exeter has seen as important for effective
benchmarking:

 Ensuring corporate IT systems are used in Colleges as well as centrally

 Attention to improving data quality (let's talk about the improvement agenda, not
whether the data are right)
 High calibre data analysts
 Ensuring that the right people have the right data at the right time
 Attractive and intuitive presentation styles (and knowing too many 'bells and whistles'
can detract)

Benchmarking data did not suddenly yield the answers to everything. Establishing how far the
University is above (or below), upper quartiles and medians is a useful first insight. Usually,
however, the intelligence from benchmarking comes not direct from the initial data - the main
purpose of the data is to provoke the probing and questioning of what the University (and its
competitors) is doing. It is through this discursive stage where the University sees genuinely
rich intelligence being gleaned, and strategic objectives considered and established.

Focusing on culture, a key factor for Exeter has been that staff feel that performance matters,
helped by a tie between recognition and reward and the University's performance: staff gain
a real share in the University's success. Most of all performance matters because it is seen as
a source of pride for academic and professional services staff to work in a very well-regarded
university.
 References

 https://www.oberlo.in/ecommerce-wiki/benchmarking
 https://www.shopify.in/encyclopedia/benchmarking
 https://jiscinfonetcasestudies.pbworks.com/w/page/59133383/University%20of%20Exeter
%20Benchmarking%20case%20study