An innovative and applicable benchmarking framework; appropriate for (SME) manufacturing businesses

Nowadays, benchmarking is one of the most popular business improvement methods, identified as the pioneer of assessment techniques. Benchmarking is a comprehensive solution which is utilized in different areas of expertise to compare parameters such as financial and marketing issues, cycle time, availability, dependability, quality of a specific product/ service, supply chain performance, productivity and efficiency of implemented processes and methods, with other companies which have been widely accepted as an industry standard of best practice. Various benchmarking frameworks have been suggested by experts. These frameworks differ in detailed steps. Key common concepts are summarized as 1) identify core topics (goals, objectives and KPI), 2) internal and external data collection, 9) analyze ( to discover gaps and determine best practices) and 4) design and implement suitable processes to achieve competitive excellence. Owing to diversity of businesses and companies in manufacturing industry, this article attempts to identify key elements of a benchmarking process to provide a baseline to evaluate SME manufacturing business classes. Based on the current popular benchmarking diagrams, eleven critical steps are suggested and an applicable benchmarking framework was designed. Validity, applicability and reliability of suggested framework was appraised and evaluated by 22 experts. In conclusion, survey studies indicate that this framework is an appropriate benchmarking tool for the (SME) manufacturing businesses to start excellence journey

Keywords:

(SME) manufacturing business , benchmarking framework , excellence journey , improvements methods