A methodology for manufacturing process benchmarking in metal removal industry

Benchmarking has been identified as one of the ways of finding the weaknesses in current practices and of going forward with continuous improvement. Several success stories have been reported in the literature. But a methodology is needed for a typical Small to Medium Company to understand and apply the principles of Benchmarking in the Manufacturing Process. This paper describes such a methodology and applies it on Metal Removal Applications. It is a four–stage method in which the company's Critical Success Factors (CSFs) together with their importance are established, in the first stage. The manufacturing elements of the type of industry are established in the second stage. Current practices are then matched with these elements. In the third stage, this information is transformed into ratings of the CSFs and the manufacturing elements. In the fourth stage, the results are interpreted to give the Performance Gaps and the company specific optimum manufacturing process. A case study is also presented to demonstrate the application of the methodology.