Maintworld 3/2017

BENCHMARKING
Demonstrating
Value with
Benchmarking
How can the service offering that creates the highest value to the customer be
identified? How can industry-wide experience-based data and knowledge be exploited
to provide, and continuously improve asset management services.
SUSANNA KUNTTU,
VTT Technical Research
Centre of Finland Ltd.,
susanna.kunttu@vtt.fi
HELENA
KORTELAINEN,
VTT Technical Research
Centre of Finland Ltd.,
helena.kortelainen@vtt.fi
SUSANNA HORN,
Outotec Oyj, susanna.
horn@outotec.com
MANUFACTURING, mining and process
industry companies around the world
are looking for comprehensive solutions
to raise and keep the overall equipment
efficiency (OEE) at a high level. From
the service provider’s point of view, this
demand requires a deep understanding
of the customer´s operation and
maintenance processes, and of the
various aspects affecting the business.
In a global operation, service sites are
seldom comparable: the installed base
(fleet), environmental conditions, maintenance
practices and processed raw
materials can vary significantly - among
other issues. Service companies focus
on providing the customers with highest
value services to improve their asset performance.
Customer value is, however,
34 maintworld 3/2017
case-specific. The solutions provided to
one customer might not be as valuable to
the next one due to e.g. customer-specific
competences or external constraints.
Benchmarking is a widely-used
method that allows a company to compare
its own practices and processes to
the practices applied in the best firms of
the industrial branch. A typical objective
is to find justified development targets
- and to benefit from existing good practices
in the industry. Service providers
could exploit benchmarking approaches
together with their customers when
looking for development needs in the
asset management practices. Among
many problems concerning benchmarking,
one challenge is to make companies,
plants or production lines and service
site comparable.
Benchmarking is not
a single method
The commonly applied benchmarking
procedure has been the comparison of
the average values of the particular industrial
sector with the company’s own
values (Komonen et. al 2011). In practice,
benchmarking approaches make
use of a variety of qualitative or quantitative
methods. Qualitative methods are
able to provide detailed and insightful
benchmarking information if the number
of involved companies is modest.
Quantitative methods, in turn, provide a
more efficient way to collect and analyze
large data sets producing benchmarking
information from a large number of
companies. The benchmarking method
and tool presented in this article is quantitative
and requires data from several
companies.
Service provider can utilize
benchmarking to develop
customer service
The benchmarking tool helps to identify
and visualize potential sources of value.
The benchmarking method promotes
service providers’ ability to recognize
improvement potential in customer’s
asset management practices and the
ability to find improvement actions for
the current situation. The method for
demonstrating value with benchmarking
(Valkokari et. al. 2016) was developed in
co-operation with Outotec that provides
asset management services to the mining
industry. The developed benchmarking
approach is generic and applicable to
other industries.
The quality and plausibility of the
data analysis results depends always on
the quality of used data. Benchmarking
methods make no exception. Benchmarking
is typically used by an organisation
that wants to compare own level of
productivity or OEE, or some other key
performance indicators with other companies
in the same industry. If a service
provider carries out the benchmarking,
the potential customer may question
the result due to possible commercial
interests. Thus, transparency of the data
collection and the data analysis is crucial
for the credibility of the results. To make
benchmarking transparent, the service
provider and the customer should carry
out the data collection and analysis in
close cooperation. The common effort
also provides a well-structured opportunity
to discuss aspects related to e.g.
the maintenance function and its successfulness.