The art of benchmarking: using customer feedback to establish a performance gap

Benchmarking is the art of establishing superior performance by identifying gaps in performance and emulating the best practices which help close them. Benchmarking is a natural development from the implementation of total quality management. It provides business organizations with the opportunity of taking an outward look at competitiveness by measuring true performance. This paper discusses various aspects of benchmarking such as its meaning, the different types of benchmarking, its implementation approaches and reported criteria facilitating its successful implementation. Since one of the difficulties of practising benchmarking is the obtainment of information, the paper discusses the merits of customer feedback in assessing current performance. As an example to highlight the importance of customer feedback, some data on customer–supplier interactions in the context of advanced manufacturing technology (AMT) have been used. The data refer on the one hand to suppliers' own assessment on the levels of support, back-up and training received from their suppliers.