Benchmarking our QMS against other organisations

[ChrissieO]

We have been asked by our management team to Benchmark our QMS against other organisations either similar in size,type of opertion etc.

Has anyone else done this and where do you start:mg:?

C

 

[JJ777]

The company you wish to benchmark to, how long are they certified and how long are you certified. There will be a difference in the maturity if the certification dates of these companies differ and then in my opinion it will be a fruitless exercise. The only valuable thing to take out is (when the maturity differs) to see where you might want to be in x period of time.

 

[somashekar]

Trust and believe that your QMS is :

GOOD.
and
CAN BE IMPROVED

Every organization and its QMS is unique to its own operations.
There may be good methods, good objective selections, Very innovative KPI's etc etc, which one can come across from other similar organizations and take these as inputs to see how your QMS can be improved.

If only QMS could be benchmarked to some number, perhaps every organization would be claiming to have met it and exceeded ...

 

[Marc]

Any other thoughts, folks?

 

[Hanr3]

Any other thoughts, folks?

Just like any other objective, you need to first define it, then you need to determine your current status, and then you can determine your goal considering a time frame.

You need to define "what" you want to measure?
Then you need to determine your current status in those areas.

Once you define your current status then start looking around for other companies to benchmark to. If you can't define your objectives, I won't be able to give you realative data.

 

[engr.post]

It'd be good to know whether this is a permanent site, project environment or site construction? The request for benchmarking: an idea could be to 'promote' the company as 'the benchmark' for others to follow. If more evidence required benchmark with your customer/client. If it's consumers then maybe go to retailers (make a few telephone calls to quality mgrs). Another suggestion is to speak with the your third party auditor / certification body and ask for feedback on the sector.

The (site) manager could be asked seriously if s/he would like suggestions on steps to ridding the company of the quality management system altogether. An idea taking the argument to the extreme to assist thoughts of the repercussions on the business. One could remind the manager that most (if not all) purchasing systems/contract/buyers still insist on a qms as a prerequisite for doing business with them.

hope this helps

 

[kumkum01]

Hello… i am new on this forum thanks for sharing this useful tips with us...There will be a difference in the maturity if the certification dates of these companies differ and then in my opinion it will be a fruitless exercise......thanks a lot..

regards...
kumkum

 

[PE-2011]

If only QMS could be benchmarked to some number, perhaps every organization would be claiming to have met it and exceeded ...


Yes, absolutely correct.

 

[Jen Kirley]

Oi. (Is there an emoticon for facepalm??) I'll settle for

Hey, I'm all for understanding where we stand and if it's valuable. But in addition to kumkum01's excellent point, here's the deal:

NIST used to compare its Baldrige Quality Award recipients' stock market performance against S&P and found the award winners "beat" the rest of the pack.

But then something happened. Enron happened, as well as the string of bad-behavior catastrophes that involved trickery that was possible due to accounting trickery and a growing overall opacity of public company management systems. NIST stopped doing the studies, I imagine because it became so hard to tell if corporate earnings reports were really earnings or not.

That opacity is a real, and I fear, insurmountable constraint to an attempt to compare your system to others. I am an internal auditor. I see enough differences between what I observe and what we show our visiting customers to deeply suspect you would never, ever get a truly objective and insightful view of other people's QMSs.

That, along with kumkum01's excellent point that organizations' QMS maturity present variation that makes side-by-side comparison unrevealing, the practical constraint. The personal question is, "To what purpose?"

Suppose I decided to become a triathlete. I sure as tootin' wouldn't compare my race time with other people. I would base my performance against that of the point in which I started. I would chart my gains over time, note problems I encounter, such as shin splints, and deal with both them and their causes.

This is the approach that I not-so-humbly propose to your management. Baldrige published a good employee survey called Are We Making Progress? A close examination of that survey will show that it covers almost all of the ISO element groups, but places particular focus on operations as viewed by the people who are doing the work.

If your management finds such an approach acceptable, it could get taken farther.

This is the best advice I have. ChrissieO, has there been anything happening on this matter since you posted your question?