Benchmarking for Best Practice

"Total Quality recognizes contributions from all employees and ensures that people are aligned towards the same ultimate goal, that of meeting customer satisfaction."

"The role of any quality assurance system is the providing of information to the levels where decisions are made."

"Managers can play a crucial role in the building of effective teams"

"Many businesses attempted to "do more of the same" in trying to seek economic quantification in everything, rather than attempting to develop a new approach to measurement."

"TQM-based [Total Quality Management]-based PM [Performance Measurement] systems are needed because they play a critical role in quality and productivity improvement efforts."

"It is important to distinguish between the meaning of a benchmark and the art of benchmarking or its practice on a continuous basis."

"Besides creating a climate of continuous improvement internally, companies can embark on optimizing their internal and external operations using benchmarking."

"Self-assessment frameworks are . . . vehicles for embarking on a journey of continuous improvement and becoming more competitive."

"Emphasis is on innovation."

"TQM has to be experienced; it is not a package to be bought off the shelf."

"Quality is about what the customer wants. What the customer wants could change with time."

"As product life cycles continue to decrease, the pressure will become greater for organizations to innovate quickly, effectively and speedily."

"TQ projects can only succeed through training all teams and team leaders in teamwork, leadership skills, problem solving techniques."

"The aim is to keep asking the question "is there compliance?""

"In the 1990s, the nature of competition has changed in many ways, by creating more difficult conditions and introducing new parameters in an unprecedented way."

"Developing a culture of innovation . . . requires putting in place systems, procedures, skills, structures and the right level of resources to initiate and sustain a never-ending approach to innovation."

"Pioneering companies refer to process rather than function, teams rather than individuals, repeated launches rather than products."

"The way forward for companies wanting to improve retention is to understand why they lose customers."

"Building a highly loyal customer base cannot be done as an add-on."

"The genuine rationalization of the supply chain can only occur when true collaboration exists between the companies involved."

"Performance management is future oriented."

"A sort of commercial marriage takes place when a JIT relationship is entered between manufacturer and supplier."

"With the advent of the partnership approach in purchasing, manufacturers and their suppliers are developing new styles of relating to one another."

"TQM encourages companies to track down value-added activity in all areas of business operations, including the "softer aspects" and the less traditional areas."

"Good measurement is one which provides quality information that will lead to action and things to be changed."

"Benchmarking is a trigger for performance measurement."

"For the reports to be useful they must be relevant, understandable, reliable, complete, objective, timely and comparable"

"Mission statements are about the introduction of fundamental change."

"It is not about an organization's ability to do things: it is very much about their ability to deliver what the customer wants."