Designing - Implementing and Improving Business

Question: Discuss about theDesigning, Implementing and Improving Business. Answer: Introduction Benchmarking is a process used to compare the performance of two business organizations. Lean six sigma is a method that is used to improve the performance of the organization by removing waste that is generated. The aim of the assignment is to discuss how organization uses the technique of benchmarking and lean six sigma to improve its business performance and achieve competitive advantage. The tool of benchmarking and lean six sigma is used to access its quality check and know the strategies used by its competitors for the operation of business. The two tools are used to enhance business process and sustain competitive advantage (Goetsch and Davis 2014). The author chooses the organization of Xerox to analyze how the organization improves its business and sustain competitive advantage. Benchmarking helps the organization sustain competitive advantage while lean six sigma method is used to enhance and improve business. Xerox was the first organization to adopt the tool of Benchmarki ng to improve its strategy and business proves. Benchmarking was used to focus on the quality improvement that led the business process of organization to improve. Then total quality improvement plan was termed as benchmarking in its later process to improve its cost and time dimensions. Body Benchmarking Benchmarking is a technique used by organization to analyze the areas that will help them improve business performance and become more competitive in the market. Benchmarking is a business report that is used to compare the performance of an organization with another organization. Benchmarking works on dimensions such as time, cost, and quality. The tool of benchmarking is used to analyze the revenue, cost, expenses, production, employee productivity and amount of an organization. Benchmarking can be used in any type of industry or company such as health, business, private, public, profit and nonprofit organizations. Benchmarking helps, the organization analyze its own performance and the areas where it can improve to fight with its competitors (Gilmour 2013). Types of Benchmarking: Different Types of Benchmarking are as follows: Best practices- This is a benchmarking report where the strategies and characteristics of another company is analyzed who the companies aspire to be. This helps the organization know the strategies that the companies use to be in a leading position so that the strategies can be applied in the organization to enhance its business (Stallkamp et al. 2012). Peer benchmarking- Peer benchmarking report consists of the strategies used by its competitors. This is done to achieve competitive advantage in the industry and know the plan of its competitors. SWOT- SWOT analysis is a marketing tool that is used to analyze the strengths, weakness, opportunities and threat of the organization by gathering data from a market survey. Collaborative benchmarking. The report is based on a particular association and is a part of a group. Benchmarking helps, the industries by providing relevant information and the methods that can be applied to get a useful result (Gernaey et al. 2014). The use of benchmarking is to know the areas where the organization can improve, the methods used by other firms to achieve high performance and it also helps in providing useful information to the organizations to improve the business. Lean Six Sigma Lean six sigma is a method used to remove the unnecessary waste from the organization to help the organization improve its business through collaborative team effort. Lean six sigma method helps in removing and eliminating eight types of waste that include transportation, inventory, over production, defects, motion, waiting, skills and over processing. Lean six sigma method is used to ensure that the organization generates minimum amount of waste and reduce defects so that it is able to maintain quality (Vinayak and Kodali 2013). The training of lean sigma is provided in a hierarchical chain that is divided into different colored belts such as white, green, yellow, black and master black belts. Lean six-sigma method is used to assure that the quality is maintained in the organization. A product that does not have any impact on consumer and add no value to consumers is considered as waste and the responsibility of Lean six sigma is to eliminate waste. Lean six-sigma method is the comb ination of two methods such as six sigma and lean manufacturing. The process of lean is to maintain the efficiency in an organization and the process of six sigma is to remove errors and defects in an organization (Furterer 2016). Application of Benchmarking and Lean Six Sigma in Business Process Change Benchmarking can be applied in business houses to compare its strategies with other organizations and enhance the business performance. The main purpose of benchmarking is to allow the business achieve what is best for the organization. It is used to find the gaps in an organization and suggest ways for improvement. Benchmarking is used in an organization to set a benchmark for the company by helping the organization reduce the cost, meet the productive demand of consumers and produce the commodity at the given time. Benchmarking is used to help the organization maintain efficiency (Cornolti et al. 2013). Benchmarking is not just about learning its own strategies and areas of improvement but also helping the organizations gather necessary information and documents that is required to formulate a competitive strategy. Three types of benchmarking include internal benchmarking, competitive benchmarking and strategic benchmarking. Internal benchmarking is a technique that is used in orga nization that is already established to share the information with other organizations to help them achieve success. Competitive benchmarking is used in organizations to achieve competitive advantage. Strategic benchmarking is used to analyze the needs of the industry identifying the excellent performance (Zhu 2014). Benchmarking uses the following steps to bring business change. The steps are based on the resources that are available to firm. The first step is to evaluate the performance of the company and find out the gaps that exist on the organization. The second step is to obtain support from the leadership team to for the execution of plan. The third step is to formulate objectives and goals of benchmarking. The fourth step is to document the process of the organization. The fifth step is to form the measurement of performance that is formulating the primary metrics that should be in a written format. The next step is to develop a plan for data collection and gather information from the prescribed sources. The last step is to execute the plan with the help of a team leader and formulate an alternative if the implemented plan is not successful (Camp 2013). Lean six sigma is used to help the organization maintain quality by eliminating the waste from the organization. Lean six sigma is a methodology that helps in enhancing the business with a joint team effort. It helps in improving the transportation and inventory system of an organization and help the organization eliminate error and defects that are found. The skills are divided into various belts. A quality detection tests help the organization reduce errors and defects (Breslin et al. 2014). Application of lean six sigma technique requires proper training of employees so that they concentrate on their work and try reducing errors and defects in the work. The second step is to identify the processes that need improvement so that the organization can concentrate on those fields only. Analyzing the effects of the particular method is necessary that can be done by using various metrics and techniques such as fishbone diagram that helps in measuring the requirement of the organization. The next step is to formulate a strategy that is cost effective. Lean six sigma is inspection of audit process to maintain high-level quality of products (Hilton and Sohal 2012). Usage of Benchmarking and Lean Six Sigma in Organizations: Case Studies Benchmarking was used in many organizations in USA, Europe and many other countries. The first company to use benchmarking was Xerox. Toyota and Ford Company used benchmarking as well to improve its business performance and achieve competitive advantage. Benchmarking was used in Starbucks coffee. This was done to minimize the cost and improve the timely delivery of the product. The concept of benchmarking was used in McDonalds. This was adopted to fight against competition and improve its performance along with maintaining quality of food that it supplied (Frontczak 2015). Case Study: Application of Benchmarking at Xerox Xerox is Photocopy Company that was established in the year 1938 by The Haloid Company. The company was said to maintain monopoly in copying and printing for many years. In 1981, the company lost its monopoly due to establishment of high tech photocopy machine by many renowned companies such as IBM and Kodak. This led the market share of Xerox to decline by thirty five percent. The reason for using benchmarking at Xerox was to fight against its competitors and improve its efficiency. Xerox found out that the Japanese were providing materials and selling the machines at a price that was cost to Xerox. The production process was higher in Xerox than its competitors were (Barkham and Saxon 2015). The company found out through quality check that it was producing thirty thousand defective products that was three times higher than its competitors. The benchmarking was used to check the cost, quality and productivity of the organization and sustain the hardcore competition that it was facin g from the competitors. Benchmarking was used to analyze the internal strategies and gaps as well as external strategies of its competitors. Benchmarking model adopted at Xerox included the following steps: Planning- this was done to identify the areas that need improvement and compare it with the techniques used by the competitors (Jung and Mukherjee Xerox Corporation, 2015). Analysis- this was done to analyze the strength of both the organization and its competitors. Integration-this step was to establish goals and objective and execute it with companies performance. Action- this step is to formulate the action plan that is required by the organization to follow in order to accomplish its goals and objectives. Maturity- this step is used to determine whether the organization was able to attain superior performance level (Orme et al. 2013). Application of benchmarking led the company adopt the following measures that proved to be successful for the organization. The suppliers were reduced from 5000 to 300. A training programme was set for the suppliers to help them understand the areas that needed improvement. Consultation of suppliers played a major role for improving the design process. Adoption of benchmarking helped the Xerox Company cut the quality problems by two third and manufacturing costs by half. The company became efficient in its production process as the development time reduced by two thirds (Rolstadas 2013). Benchmarking proved to be beneficial for the company as it helped the company fight its competitors and maintain efficiency in business. Xerox Company established the concept of benchmarking. Leadership through quality was later known as benchmarking, as the aim of the company was to create its own benchmark. The principle of the Xerox Company was to meet the requirement of customers and maintain qua lity. Benchmarking was used at Xerox to maintain and improve quality, reduce the manufacturing cost and improve the productivity and manufacturing time. Conclusion Hence, benchmarking and lean six sigma tools were used in organization to improve its business performance and bring about change. Benchmarking is used to improve the performance of the organization and maintain a good quality. Lean six sigma is used to reduce errors in an organization. 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