ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to help potential benchmarkers understand some of the theories and practitioner approaches most prevalent today. It looks at benchmarking as a business improvement tool and its growth over the last 20 years or so. The links between benchmarking and Total Quality Management cannot be ignored, so this connection will be made, along with the key points made by some of the 'quality gurus'. There are many different forms of benchmarking. Internal metric benchmarking is often used by organizations with a number of sites or locations where they use key performance measures as criteria for comparison. PILOT is a benchmarking survey tool developed as part of the Regional Competitiveness Project. Camp suggests there is a need for a standard classification of business processes, just as there are standard industrial classification codes for industries. The messages from the theorists and the practitioners are clear: benchmarking, when carried out correctly, offers many benefits.
