Guide for Customer-Driven Benchmarking of Maintenance Activities (2004) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 27-42
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From page 27... ...
This guide distinguishes between benchmarking partners and benchmarking units. Benchmarking partners are organizations that have the authority to do all of the following: ♦ Enter into an agreement with other organizations to perform customer-driven benchmarking; ♦ Define a set of maintenance products and, services, or both that are appropriate for their organization; and ♦ Establish or change the performance measures used by their organization.
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From page 28... ...
♦ The organization under which the unit resides finds it practical and economically feasible to collect statistically valid customer satisfaction data. A benchmarking partner and a benchmarking unit are not necessarily the same -- for example, a state maintenance organization could be a benchmarking partner with benchmarking units consisting of districts, counties, areas, or garages.
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; and customer-driven outcome measures (e.g., the International Roughness Index, Customer Satisfaction Rating) related to each attribute.
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For example, if one agency measures sign quality through rigorous retro-reflectivity measurements and customer surveys and a second agency measures sign quality through "windshield surveys," you cannot compare performance. An essential criteria for selecting a partner is its willingness to work with others to define common measures of performance and to develop data collection procedures that will be used by everyone.
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More typically, you will benchmark with partners that function in a variety of operating conditions, including conditions that are very different from yours. Benchmarking units in different operating environments will have adapted to different factors (hardships)
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Sometimes public agencies even contract out all types of maintenance activities along a route (i.e., an Interstate highway) or even within a certain jurisdiction.
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Fewer barriers to trade and constantly improving communications have created a global economy that knows no borders. Multinational corporations find it imperative to stay abreast of best practices from around the world.
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In a state agency, this is likely to be an area approximately the size of a county (however, today most state agencies do not have statistically valid customer satisfaction data below the district level, such as at the county or area level)
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You can make do with less, but your ability to identify practices that are better for any one of the benchmarking units will decline accordingly. Large agencies such as state transportation agencies can perform customer-driven benchmarking without forming partnerships: they can benchmark internally among subunits -- areas, garages, counties, and regions -- all under the state's jurisdiction.
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maintenance in many of the partner organizations and can help close the deal on the benchmarking agreement. Also, the chief executive officer (CEO)
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The objective should be to improve customer satisfaction and observable customer-oriented outcomes or to reduce the cost of delivering the product or service, or both.
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Target Products, Services, Activities, and Business Processes The partnership agreement should identify products, services, activities, and business processes that are candidates for benchmarking. In general, the agreement should be flexible and should not specify precisely what will be benchmarked.
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Time Period The time period for the agreement must be defined. Recognize that if the partners are defining product or services, establishing measures, and collecting data for the first time, 1 year can easily pass before any measurements are taken and the performances of the benchmarking units are evaluated.
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From page 40... ...
Sharing Information on Performance The agreement should contain a clause stating that each participant agrees to sharing information on performance in terms of each of the following: ♦ Outcomes and outputs; ♦ Inputs (labor, equipment, material, and costs; financial information may be problematic for private firms) ; ♦ Levels of external factors; and ♦ Details of business processes associated with each performance.
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Documentation There should be a provision in the agreement that requires benchmarking partners to document, for the consideration of others, any practices that are determined to be superior or best practices. The documentation might include the following: ♦ Sources of data on outputs, inputs, and external factors; ♦ Information on the reliability, accuracy, and repeatability of data and measurements; ♦ Raw and reduced data from systems that provide the data for benchmarking; ♦ Description of work methods that may exist; ♦ Existing procedural manuals; ♦ Business process flow charts prepared according to conventions agreed upon by the benchmarking partners; ♦ Training, education, and experience levels of labor; ♦ Vendor information regarding the materials and equipment used; and ♦ Costs (variable and overhead)
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From page 42... ...
Even so, you will have more to do to solidify the participation of the benchmarking units so that you can proceed to measure and analyze performance. By the time you sign a benchmarking agreement with your partners, you will probably know at what level of the organization you plan to benchmark and will have a general agreement to participate from the managers responsible for those organizational units.
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