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Elements and Performance Criteria

1. Identify nature of benchmarking activity
   • Identify operations or area to be benchmarked
   • Determine the core set of benchmark measures required

Required Skills

Required skills

Required skills include undertaking selfdirected problem solving and decisionmaking communicating across all levels in an organisation determining operations or area to be benchmarked by previous benchmarking identification by other studies or processes of area of need informal conversations with customers employees or suppliers exploratory research techniques such as focus groups indepth marketing research quantitative research surveys questionnaires engineering analysis process mapping quality control variance reports or financial ratio analysis interpreting data and qualitative information gained from benchmarking cooperating and working with others both internally and externally to the work group analysing and planning communicating effectively both receiving and sending communications solving problems to root cause prioritising benchmarking needs and data in relation to organisation goals objectives and strategies

Required knowledge

Required knowledge includes the organisations performance data andor processes subject to the benchmarking to a level needed to identify appropriate applications for benchmarking and apply the benchmarking results to it benchmarking protocols benchmarking code of practice legal and ethical issues involved in benchmarking different approaches to benchmarking and their applications performance versus process benchmarking criterion referenced versus qualitative versus quantitative benchmarking and the applications of each group processes own organisations intellectual property and stance on confidentiality benchmarking partners attitudes to confidentiality application of benchmarking to continuous improvement and the concept of continually improving best practice distinction between measurable data and useful information validity of benchmarking measures data and information measures of data quality and methods of improving the quality of benchmarking information application of benchmarking data and information to Balanced Scorecard approaches

Evidence Required

The evidence guide provides advice on assessment and must be read in conjunction with the performance criteria required skills and knowledge range statement and the Assessment Guidelines for the Training Package
Critical aspects for assessment and evidence required to demonstrate competency in this unit	A person who demonstrates competency in this unit must be able to provide evidence of the ability to determine priority operations or areas for benchmarking undertake benchmarking implement or initiate and follow through on the implementation of the actions which flow from the benchmarking examine the outcomes and identify improvements
Context of and specific resources for assessment	Assessment of performance must be undertaken in a workplace using or implementing one or more competitive systems and practices Access may be required to workplace procedures and plans relevant to work area specifications and documentation relating to planned currently being implemented or implemented changes to work processes and procedures relevant to the assessee documentation and information in relation to production waste overheads and hazard controlmanagement reports from supervisorsmanagers case studies and scenarios to assess responses to contingencies
Method of assessment	A holistic approach should be taken to the assessment Competence in this unit may be assessed by using a combination of the following to generate evidence demonstration in the workplace workplace projects suitable simulation case studiesscenarios particularly for assessment of contingencies improvement scenarios and so on targeted questioning reports from supervisors peers and colleagues thirdparty reports portfolio of evidence In all cases it is expected that practical assessment will be combined with targeted questioning to assess underpinning knowledge Where applicable reasonable adjustment must be made to work environments and training situations to accommodate ethnicity age gender demographics and disability
Guidance information for assessment	Assessment processes and techniques must be culturally appropriate and appropriate to the language and literacy capacity of the candidate and the work being performed

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Range Statement

The range statement relates to the unit of competency as a whole. It allows for different work environments and situations that may affect performance. Bold italicised wording, if used in the performance criteria, is detailed below. Essential operating conditions that may be present with training and assessment (depending on the work situation, needs of the candidate, accessibility of the item, and local industry and regional contexts) may also be included.
Competitive systems and practices	Competitive systems and practices may include, but are not limited to: lean operations agile operations preventative and predictive maintenance approaches monitoring and data gathering systems, such as Systems Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) software, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, Materials Resource Planning (MRP) and proprietary systems statistical process control systems, including six sigma and three sigma Just in Time (JIT), kanban and other pull-related operations control systems supply, value, and demand chain monitoring and analysis 5S continuous improvement (kaizen) breakthrough improvement (kaizen blitz) cause/effect diagrams overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) takt time process mapping problem solving run charts standard procedures current reality tree Competitive systems and practices should be interpreted so as to take into account: the stage of implementation of competitive systems and practices the size of the enterprise the work organisation, culture, regulatory environment and the industry sector
Sources of benchmarking data	Sources of benchmarking data may include: other relevant areas within the same organisation external organisations in a similar market/with similar processes external organisations recognised as a leader in the process/activity under study benchmarking consultancies offering access to relevant data/information/organisations

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