Article Critique Paper

Article Summation

Benchmarking is a tool to help improve business processes. Companies may adapt outstanding practices from organizations anywhere in the world to help its organization improve its performance. The article I choose discusses how three different companies used benchmarking to improve processes and productivity.

Cablea is an outdoor gear catalogue company and used benchmarking methods to measure service levels in its five call centers and to reduce number of telephone transfers of the call received. The company states "what the data revealed is that not all CSRs can answer every single question posed to them, so we don't strive for 100% in that area. But we have been able to cut down the amount of times we've transferred calls between agents significantly" (Del Franco, 2002, p.1).

Sur La Table sells cooking tools and used benchmarking to analyze the performance of its distribution and call centers. A representative for the company stated they were able to break down specific costs to see where improvement could be made (Del Franco, 2002, p.1).

The last company, Swanson Health products, used benchmarking to improve picking and packing efficiency. The article stated (Del Franco, 2002) the company determined its staff picked an average of 600 SKUs an hour but packed only 310 SKUs. The company devised a method where the workers place the merchandise in the packing carton instead of a carton that would be sent to packing. The company stated by improving this process a step was eliminated.

The article also gives the following benchmarking tips: (Del Franco, 2002, p.1)

1. Benchmark your company's performance over time.

2. Compare your company with similar companies making similar products.

3. Benchmark your company against companies of similar

Assigned Reading Material

The reading material this week talks about the Dell Computer Company and how it has become the company to benchmark in the computer industry. The article stated, "A key to the success of Dell Computer is the fact that customers order over the Internet

and are willing to wait at least a week for the delivery of their computer systems. Most

consumers do not buy computers this way; rather, they go to Wal-Mart or Staples or some other discount store and purchase a computer from the available stock in the store. Often the computer is bundled