Guide for Customer-Driven Benchmarking of Maintenance Activities (2004) / Chapter Skim
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7CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION TO BENCHMARKING WHAT IS BENCHMARKING? Benchmarking is a concept that is at least as old as the athletic events of ancient Greece.
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on internal business processes of an organization. Often, key aspects of industrial processes were measured and compared with those of other firms to speed up and improve the efficiency of production -- for example, by increasing productivity of workers and reducing manufacturing defects.
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♦ Central to customer-driven benchmarking is measuring the outcomes of maintenance that are important to customers. Outcomes include customer satisfaction and the conditions that result from providing maintenance products and services.
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Figure 3 shows a plot of the results achieved by different organizational units versus the resources applied. Examples of results are customer satisfaction and conditions that are the outcomes of maintenance.
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; examining work methods, including how the resources were combined and applied; and documenting each step of the business process. Once an agency has identified best practices, it then must decide whether to adopt and implement them.
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♦ Specific customer outcomes will improve: – The value customers receive will increase, – Customer satisfaction will increase, – Condition of assets will improve, – Life-cycle costs will decline, – Traffic delay will decline, – Safety of road users is likely to improve, and – The quality of the environment will be enhanced. ♦ One can deal more effectively with the groups that insist on accountability, such as the legislature.
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The time, effort, staff resources, and attention to detail required of the organization cannot be underestimated. You need to use the same performance measures as your benchmarking partners, and most likely you will not have the same measures to start with.
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Even if an agency chooses to benchmark internally, many organizations do not have suitable customer-driven outcome measures. Many states lack customer survey information that is statistically valid at the county, subcounty, or area level of the organization, and they have few relevant technical measures of performance -- for example, reflectivity of pavement markings.
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One of the things you will have to do when benchmarking is gather labor, equipment, and material data for each relevant maintenance activity. ♦ Internal or external organizational units.
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Benchmarking Units and Identify the Better Performing Units 3-64. Take Measurements 3-6 3.
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Different levels of management in the maintenance organization have different roles in benchmarking: ♦ Head of maintenance, chief engineer, chief executive officer: Provide leadership, foster the necessary change in culture, facilitate communication among organizations or organizational units participating in benchmarking, approve new performance targets, and allocate resources for improvements. ♦ District, area, and garage managers: Take measurements by collecting data, help document existing practices and share practices with benchmarking partners, assist in implementing improved practices, and help make recommendations for reallocation of resources.
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them, get their best ideas on how to proceed, and obtain their commitment. Champions It has been demonstrated repeatedly in many areas that a champion can greatly accelerate the implementation of a new process.
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Collectively this team requires background and experience in the following: ♦ Defining maintenance practices and managing maintenance work (i.e., the team requires an expert who has credibility with field managers) ; ♦ Designing, administering, and interpreting costumer surveys and related consumer research; ♦ Collecting and utilizing data for performance measurement; ♦ Inputting, manipulating, and extracting data from the maintenance and related asset management systems; ♦ Inputting, manipulating, and extracting data from the financial management system; ♦ Setting performance targets, budgeting, and allocating resources to field organizations; and 19
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Related Management Processes A typical organization, whether public or private, has many related management processes and systems that seek to achieve some of the same goals as customer-driven benchmarking. It is important to be aware of these related management processes, to use relevant data and performance measures from these processes, and to coordinate with them.
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Therefore, at the start of undertaking a benchmarking effort, it is desirable to take an inventory of your agency's asset management efforts. By doing so, you will be able to identify procedures, performance measures, sources of data and information, and other resources that can help in benchmarking.
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Gradually, and then with increasing speed, public officials and managers in government recognized that establishing customer-oriented performance measures and targets for accomplishments is one of the most effective ways to improve government efficiency and effectiveness. With the enactment of the Government Performance and Results Act, all federal agencies were required to develop a performancebased strategic plan by identifying appropriate input, outcome, and output measures; setting targets; striving to meet the targets; and reporting on their progress.
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The private sector has also been using performance-based planning. In order to avoid the dangers of relying upon an overly narrow set of performance measures, many private firms (and government agencies)
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Before getting started on benchmarking, learn what your agency is doing to comply with GASB reporting requirements. Those efforts may produce measures, data, and other information useful for customer-driven benchmarking of maintenance activities.
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Here are some benchmarking myths that need to be dispelled: ♦ Everybody and every organization is different, so you cannot compare performance. Effective customer-driven benchmarking methods control for variations in weather, terrain, traffic, and other hardship factors outside the control of organizational units.
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♦ The rewards of benchmarking just go to the best performers. Not just one organizational unit will improve its performance when it adopts a best practice: all organizational units can potentially adopt the best practice, and thus the service to customers of the entire organization will be enhanced.
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27 ✓ Remain focused on the customer. Keep your attention on the outcomes that affect customer satisfaction and value received, not on production and inputs.
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