Benchmarking performance measures in traditional and just‐in‐time companies

Integrated MCDM for Benchmarking Techniques in Indian Service Industries

Industries need to ascend their standards for competitiveness and adopt modern methods with techniques for effectiveness of their system which occurs through convention of benchmarking techniques. The rationale of the study is to review the benchmarking techniques and moreover to rank on the basis of their application in service industries. To rank the benchmarking, analytical network process and technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) methods are used. An integrated model of multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) is used for prioritizing the best practices in Indian service sector. The study identifies different types of benchmarking techniques among which generic benchmarking, external benchmarking and internal benchmarking occupy the first three ranks, providing basis for several critical success factors (CSFs) like planning, reliability, standardization, time behavior and usability as the more important parts of benchmarking. Thus, an endeavor has been made by authors to give a model for evaluation of benchmarking techniques through MCDM which gives confidence for executives to adopt benchmarking in their industries.

Performance measures of ISO 9001 certified and non-certified manufacturing companies

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to compare ISO 9001 certified and non-certified manufacturing companies with regard to performance measures, both financial and non-financial.

Design/methodology/approach

– A research study was carried out in 140 Greek manufacturing companies by means of a questionnaire. The questionnaire was sent by e-mail and it was requested that it should be answered by a company representative. Exploratory factor analysis is applied in order to extract the latent factors of performance measures. The differences between the ISO 9001 certified and non-certified manufacturing companies are determined through non-parametric tests such as the χ2-test and the Mann-Whitney U-test.

Findings

– The ISO 9001 certified manufacturing companies significantly outperform the non-certified with regard to product quality, customer satisfaction, operational, market and financial performance. This is evident in a business environment where an economic downturn and financial crisis dominates.

Research limitations/implications

– The sub-samples of the responding ISO 9001 certified and non-certified manufacturing companies are small sized and they are limited to small- and medium-sized enterprises. The subjective character of the data collected through the company representatives involves the risk of receiving biased responses regarding the performance measures. The above limitations suggest future research recommendations.

Practical implications

– The increased performance measures of the ISO 9001 certified manufacturing companies may motivate the non-certified ones to implement the ISO 9001 standard and apply for the certification in order to increase their performance and withstand the current economic downturn and financial crisis. The present study may also stimulate manufacturing companies to adopt traditional and modern benchmarking techniques, in an additional effort to improve their businesses and competitiveness.

Originality/value

– The present study compares performance measures of ISO 9001 certified and non-certified manufacturing companies operating under unprecedented circumstances due to the current economic downturn and financial crisis.

The perceived impact of JIT implementation on operations performance

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the perceived impact of just‐in‐time (JIT) implementation on operations performance, identify the relationship between elements of JIT (integrated and individual) and performance metrics, and based on the results, present some helpful suggests for improving JIT implementation in manufacturing industry.

Design/methodology/approach

Framework and hypotheses based on literature review were first constructed, then a questionnaire was developed to collect data from mainland China; in total, 224 information responses were obtained, then statistical analysis was carried out to test the hypotheses. Based on the data analysis results, conclusion and managerial insight were summarized.

Findings

Results show that, no matter what kind of industry or scale of sale of the firm, implementation of an aggregate bundle of JIT elements can improve production operations performance. However, for individual elements of JIT, their impacts are different; some basic elements of JIT like 5S, multiple‐skill employee and JIT purchasing can play a more remarkable role than other elements.

Practical implications

The conclusions of this paper can benefit firms in improving implementation of JIT in practice, especially for those firms in developing countries.

Originality/value

Although a number of studies on JIT implementation have been reported in developed countries, little attention has been paid to the status of Chinese firms; this paper has value for examining the practice of JIT in China and reference value for other developing countries’ firms.