Benchmarking

Aim

To create a report on Bench-marking process and to suggest Mr. D.S.Pughazhyendhii a car suitable to his demands through benchmarking presently available cars in the market.

Bench-Marking

Benchmarking is defined as the process of measuring products, services and processes against those of organizations known to be leaders in one or more aspects of their operations. Benchmarking provides neccessary insights to help you understand how your organization compares with similar organizations, even if they are in a different business or have a different group of customers. Bench marking can also help organizations identify areas, systems or processes for improvements - either incremental (continuous) improvements or dramatic (business process re-engineering) improvements.

Benchmarking has been classified into two distinct categories: technical and competitive. The 'house of quality' matrix and 'Gantt charts' are often used to plot the benchmarking evaluation.

Technical benchmarking is performed by design staff to determine the capabilities of products or services, especially in comparison to the products or services of leading competitors. Whereas Competitive benchmarking compares how well (or poorly) an organization is doing with respect to the leading competition, especially with respect to critically important attributes, functions or values assosiated with the organizations product or services.

Bench-Marking Procedure :

1. Considerations

• Before an organisation can achieve the full benefits of benchmarking, its own processes must be clearly understood and under control.
• Benchmarking studies require significant investments of manpower and time, so management must champion the process all the way through, including being ready and willing to make changes based on what is learned.
• Too broad a scope dooms the project to failure. A subject that is not critical to the organization’s success won’t return enough benefits to make the study worthwhile.
• Inadequate resources can also doom a benchmarking study by underestimating the effort involved or inadequate planning. The better you prepare, the more efficient your study will be.

2. Plan

• Define a tightly focused subject of the benchmarking study. Choose an issue critical to the organization’s success.
• Form a cross-functional team. During these, management’s goals and support for the study must be firmly established.
• Study your own process. Know how the work is done and measurements of the output.
• Identify partner organizations that may have best practices.

3. Collect

• Collect information directly from partner organizations. Collect both process descriptions and numeric data, using questionnaires, telephone interviews, and/or site visits.

4. Analyze

• Compare the collected data, both numeric and descriptive.
• Determine gaps between your performance measurements and those of your partners.
• Determine the differences in practices that cause the gaps.

5. Adapt

• Develop goals for your organization’s process.
• Develop action plans to achieve those goals.
• Implement and monitor plans.

Benefits of Bench-Marking

In addition to helping companies become more efficient and profitable, benchmarking has other benefits, too, such as:

• Improving employee understanding of cost structures and internal processes
• Encouraging team-building and cooperation in the interests of becoming more competitive
• Enhancing familiarity with key performance metrics and opportunities for improvement company-wide

In essence, benchmarking helps employees understand how one small piece of a company’s processes or products can be the key to major success, just as one employee’s contributions can lead to a big win.

Requirements of Client

• Place : Bangalore ( A large city with very high traffic during peak hours)
• Family : 5 members
• Purpose of car : Daily commute to office
• Additional purpose : Monthly travel to Madurai (500 km)
• Preference : Client is fond of big cars
• Budget : 8 to 10 lakhs on road price

Therefore based on the above requirements of the client, he needs a 5 seater car in the SUV segment under the price of 10 lakhs which is well suitable for daily rides as well as for long distance rides.

So based on his requirements we are suggesting 4 cars belonging to the SUV segment. They are listed below:

1. TATA Nexon XE

2. Maruthi Breeza Lxi

3. Kia Sonet 1.2 HTK

4. Renault Kiger RXT

1. TATA Nexon XE

2. Maruthi Breeza Lxi

3. Kia Sonet 1.2 HTK

4. Renault Kiger RXT

The comparison between these 4 cars will be made on the following features:

1. On road price
2. Mileage Kmpl
3. Fuel type
4. Engine Displacement cc
5. Max Power bhp
6. Max Torque Nm
7. Fuel capacity
8. Boot Space
9. Transmission type
10. Air bags
11. Safety rating

Specifications	TATA Nexon XE	Maruthi Breeza Lxi	Kia Sonet 1.2 HTK	Renault Kiger RXT
On road price	8,97,000	9,20,000	9,83,000	8,96,000
Mileage Kmpl	21.50	20.15	18.40	19.17
Fuel type	Diesel	Petrol	Petrol	Petrol
Engine Displacement cc	1497	1462	1197	999
Max Power bhp	108bhp@4000rpm	101.65bhp@6000rpm	81.86bhp@6000rpm	71.01bhp@6250rpm
Max Torque Nm	260nm@1500-2750rpm	136.8nm@4400rpm	115nm@4200rpm	96nm@3500rpm
Fuel capacity	44 Liters	48 Liters	45 Liters	40 Liters
Boot Space	350 Liters	328 Liters	392 Liters	405 Liters
Transmission type	Manual	Manual	Manual	Manual
Air bags	Driver and Passenger	Driver and Passenger	Driver, Passenger and Side Front	Driver, Passenger and Side Front
Safety Rating	16.06/17	4 star NCAP	3 star NCAP	4 star NCAP

Conclusion

From the above comparison we suggest Mr D.S.Pughazhyendhii to go for TATA Nexon XE because:

1. It gives better mileage
2. Has a very high safety rating
3. Engine performance is superior comparitively.
4. It has better value for money