ABSTRACT
Texas Instruments conducted a benchmarking study of companies that were considered to be ‘world class” in a particular production process. After extensive study and analysis, they concluded that some of their own plants used practices that were far better than those that they had benchmarked outside of their firm. They developed a “best practices” database to enable the sharing of such practices worldwide throughout the firm.
Chaparral Steel allows competitors to tour their plant and to speak freely with their line managers and employees without a senior manager being present. There is no fear of their secrets being “stolen” because the knowledge that is embedded in their production process has been accumulated over a long period of time and through much “trial and error.” There is no single critical factor, or small number of factors, that could be readily discovered by a competitor.
A software manager is faced with a difficult software development problem and is under time pressure to make a decision. She knows that others in her large firm must have faced similar problems in the past, but she does not know exactly who they might be. She guesses who might have such knowledge and makes a number of phone calls and sends some emails; after leaving some messages, finding that some people are no longer with the firm and not receiving any callbacks, she gives up and makes a decision even though she is not very comfortable with the level of expertise that she has brought to bear. An “expert network,” such as Microsoft has developed, would enable her to ask questions of, and conduct dialogue with, numerous experts who have been identified with specific phases of software development.
