Promoting business excellence
Diagnostic and best practice benchmarking tools
What is Promoting Business Excellence?
Promoting Business Excellence (PROBE) is a suite of diagnostic and best practice benchmarking tools.
It's one of the products developed from research carried out by the Centre for Operations and Technology Management. The research has led to the development of major international databases of practice and performance in manufacturing, engineering and service.
Service PROBE
The team also developed research questionnaires that companies can adapt for internal self-assessment and benchmarking.
One of these tools, Service Probe, is based on the results of the International Service Study. It looks at the components of world-class excellence in the services industry:
- business leadership
- service processes
- people
- performance management.
The process
Companies receive a briefing pack and self-assessment booklet, guidelines for completion and information on how to set up a multi-function, multi-level team.
The team-based assessment takes approximately half-a-day and lets companies analyse areas such as:
- organisation and culture
- quality
- cycle times
- plant and equipment
- logistics.
A facilitator visits the site and meets the team, processes and analyses the results and provides feedback on the findings.
The results
These show the organisation how they measure up to industry best practice, and analyse major gap areas in practice and performance. The company can then plan improvements.
International Service Study
The methodology used in PROBE is also used in the current International Service Study. The international database presently includes about 250 organisations.
The service is not offered commercially at the moment, but all participants in the study receive feedback, helping them to position themselves against international best practice and to target improvement areas.
