Developing and Testing Benchmarking and Self- assessment Frameworks in Manufacturing

Benchmarking and self-assessment is being used increasingly by industry as a tool to help identify “best practice”, and to identify areas for improvement. In the quality management area, the impact has been particularly striking. In the US and Europe the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award has been particularly effective. Many companies have used it both for benchmarking and self-assessment leading to great improvements in quality practices and performance[1]. To date these approaches have been practice led, with limited academic rigour of the kind that is found in other areas and tools for improvement in manufacturing. The research in this article set out to examine two questions, first, can an academic based approach contribute to more rigorous benchmarking and self-assessment in manufacturing and, second, can tools be developed for use in areas in manufacturing, in particular those to do with technology management.