The manufacturer’s axis is internal diagnosis or internal benchmarking. This time, we speak the same language and compare apples with apples… Admittedly, apples are not all of the same nature, but they are still apples.
It becomes more difficult for the actors to find excuses because we are going to compare them to sites producing more or less the same type of products with similar processes.
Sometimes we will take into account a certain complexity but we will really start to put our finger on important differences between sites or units. Again, the goal is not to find the absolute truth but to make people think and bring acceptance of the need for change further.
This is often the decisive moment when the proudest people start to realize that they are very far from the idea they have of their performance.
We begin to see this on the faces and in the words of the actors on the site at this point in the diagnosis.
Among hundreds of examples, in the automotive plastic components sector, we have carried out internal benchmarks on machine performance and reject rates.
Since the thermoplastic injection technology is the same with similar plastics and similar quality criteria, we considered that the sites were close enough to align on the same definitions and start comparing.
When this comparison was never made, we were often surprised to see very large differences between units.
In the more administrative functions, for example in insurance, we have regularly carried out internal benchmarks on file processing times or response times to clients or the number of files per month and per medical expert (the classic bottleneck).