Business Finance

Running Head : Business Finance

Name

University

Course

Tutor

Date

Introduction

In business management environment , Benchmarking refers to the practice of an organization or a firm to admit that other organization is better at it 's management practices thereby an organization resorting to learn how to match them and even surpass them in management practices which are aimed at improving the company output and sustainability (Esource 2007 . Therefore benchmarking involves learning from others within the same scale and line of production . In this respect , benchmarking involves measuring

own and partner 's performance level , comparing the performance level , practices and processes . After comparison learning follows in to introduce improvements in an organization and lastly is to realize improvement which is the ultimate goal of benchmarking (Esource , 2007

In this regard benchmarking should focus on achieving firm 's breakthrough improvements , by introducing practices that are new to an industry , through generic benchmarking (Jacobs , Nicholas , Richard , 2006 br

.54 ) is to improve one of the organization 's business processes . In this connection the key steps in benchmarking is to plan the critical success factors , processes and performance measures . Secondly is to search for the benchmarking partner . Thirdly the firm management should observe to document and understand benchmarking partner 's practices and performance . The fourth step is to analyze the two pieces of information in to identify the gap in performance and establish the root cause that leads to those performance gaps identified . And lastly is the step of adapting to the best practices and implement change that will yield desired outputs . In this regard benchmarking is vital to business organizations because it helps to cope with competitive and dynamic business environment hence enables business survival and sustainability

Case study : Kuiper Leda Company

Kuiper Leda Company (Kuiper ) involves and specializes in the production of ECUs (Electronic Control Units . Kuiper 's customers are OEMs and automobile manufacturers . However it ventured into RFID (Radio Frequency Identification Devices ) line . Despite this new venture in the business the firm has got supply chain management challenges which are similar to other firms . These challenges include deliveries of product , resources and shop capacity . Furthermore Kuiper has small consumer market and a limited production capacity of RFIDs and ECUs (Jacobs , Nicholas Richard , 2006 ,

. 231

However the firm has built a strong relationship with customers due to its delivery responsiveness and quality . This is because it employs supplier relations and repeat s . But the fact still remains that Kuiper operates within a competitive business environment , therefore it should be informed of its competitors and focus on the delivery and capacity management

Another challenge that Kuiper Company faced is the overloaded supply chain that results to inefficiency due to fluctuating demand in the market . This is a problem because it leads to lack of uniformity in the production forcing suppliers to struggle in to meet Kuiper Leda requirements . Therefore the organization needs to ensure that demand does not affects its suppliers and responsive . Therefore there is a management problem in...