Xerox: The Benchmarking Story

Benchmarking can be defined as a process for improving performance by constantly identifying, understanding and adapting best practices and processes followed inside and outside the company and implementing the results. The main emphasis of benchmarking is on improving a given business operation or a process by exploiting 'best practices,' not on 'best performance.'

Simply put, benchmarking means comparing one's organization or a part of it with that of the other companies. Companies can adopt one or more of the following types of benchmarking...

Xerox found that all the Japanese copier companies put together had only 1,000 suppliers, while Xerox alone had 5,000. To keep the number of suppliers low, Japanese companies standardized many parts. Often, half the components of similar machines were identical. To ensure part standardization, Japanese companies worked closely with their suppliers. They frequently trained vendor's employees in quality control, manufacturing automation and other key areas. Cooperation between the company and the vendor extended to just-in-time production scheduling, i.e. delivery in small quantities, as per the customer's production schedule...