Benchmarking is a process designed to enhance firm or business unit perfomance by evaluating products, processes or functions against industry best practice. But many managers remain sceptical. Does benchmarking really deliver reliable measures of relative performance?
In this compact and self-contained book, Thijs ten Raa demonstrates the power of benchmarking. He presents the tools, theory, and practice of benchmarking, explaining the principles that underlie the most commonly used technique, and shows how useful economic information about efficiency, productivity and profitability can be gleaned from it. Benchmarking has always been plagued by the problem of assigning weights to different performance scores, but ten Raa solves that problem, providing rational performance indices and rankings.
The book features Excel screenshots to guide the readeer through applications, and real-world case studies are included throughout.
'Many people in business talk about benchmarking. This book provides techniques that actually enable you to do it'.
- John Kay, author of The Truth about Markets
'This elegant book shows how to measure the relative operational efficiency of enterprises. It provides both theoretical guidance and practical examples of techniques that can help identify underperforming and overperforming groups in your organization. Anyone interested in performance evaluation will want to read this book.'
– Hal Varian, Professor of Economics, Business and Information, University of California at Berkeley, USA
"This is a smart and delightful way of showing the theoretical underpinning of data envelopment analysis. Experts in linear programming and aficionados of Data Envelopment Analysis as well as the brightest of students will love this short book for the elegance and purity of its reasoning.'
- Tom Weyman-Jones, Loughborough University
What is Benchmarking and Why is it Useful?
Linear Programming in one Lesson
The Technique of Benchmarking
Case study 1: Spanish Restaurants
Case study 2: Indian Banks
Case study 3: Korean Quality Management
Case study 4: Austrian Banking Deregulation
Efficiency, Productivity and Profitability
Case study 5: U.S. Manufacturing
Case study 6: U.S. Hotels
Case study 7: European Railways Efficiency
Ranking
Case study 8: Dutch Economics and Business Schools
Returns to Scale
Case study 9: U.S. Real Estate Investment Trusts
Case study 10: European Railways Returns to Scale
Concluding Remarks
THIJS TEN RAA is Associate Professor of Economics at Tilburg University, the Netherlands and has also been affiliated with New York University and Erasmus University, Rotterdam. He has published seven books and over a hundred articles in professional journals. In 2006 he shared the Wassily Leontief Centennial Medal with Professors Klein and Solow.
Description
Benchmarking is a process designed to enhance firm or business unit perfomance by evaluating products, processes or functions against industry best practice. But many managers remain sceptical. Does benchmarking really deliver reliable measures of relative performance?
In this compact and self-contained book, Thijs ten Raa demonstrates the power of benchmarking. He presents the tools, theory, and practice of benchmarking, explaining the principles that underlie the most commonly used technique, and shows how useful economic information about efficiency, productivity and profitability can be gleaned from it. Benchmarking has always been plagued by the problem of assigning weights to different performance scores, but ten Raa solves that problem, providing rational performance indices and rankings.
The book features Excel screenshots to guide the readeer through applications, and real-world case studies are included throughout.
Reviews
'Many people in business talk about benchmarking. This book provides techniques that actually enable you to do it'.
- John Kay, author of The Truth about Markets
'This elegant book shows how to measure the relative operational efficiency of enterprises. It provides both theoretical guidance and practical examples of techniques that can help identify underperforming and overperforming groups in your organization. Anyone interested in performance evaluation will want to read this book.'
– Hal Varian, Professor of Economics, Business and Information, University of California at Berkeley, USA
"This is a smart and delightful way of showing the theoretical underpinning of data envelopment analysis. Experts in linear programming and aficionados of Data Envelopment Analysis as well as the brightest of students will love this short book for the elegance and purity of its reasoning.'
- Tom Weyman-Jones, Loughborough University
Contents
What is Benchmarking and Why is it Useful?
Linear Programming in one Lesson
The Technique of Benchmarking
Case study 1: Spanish Restaurants
Case study 2: Indian Banks
Case study 3: Korean Quality Management
Case study 4: Austrian Banking Deregulation
Efficiency, Productivity and Profitability
Case study 5: U.S. Manufacturing
Case study 6: U.S. Hotels
Case study 7: European Railways Efficiency
Ranking
Case study 8: Dutch Economics and Business Schools
Returns to Scale
Case study 9: U.S. Real Estate Investment Trusts
Case study 10: European Railways Returns to Scale
Concluding Remarks
Authors
THIJS TEN RAA is Associate Professor of Economics at Tilburg University, the Netherlands and has also been affiliated with New York University and Erasmus University, Rotterdam. He has published seven books and over a hundred articles in professional journals. In 2006 he shared the Wassily Leontief Centennial Medal with Professors Klein and Solow.
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