At the US automaker where I once worked, assembly plant shifts were scheduled back to back. If one shift finished at 3:00 pm, another was hard at work by 3:30. The plants' managers pushed hard to meet production quotas while minimizing input costs by keeping the line going pretty much all the time. The underlying productivity arithmetic is basic to any manager's: maximize output (cars), minimize inputs (labor, electricity to run the machines, etc.). Interestingly, the world's reigning champ of manufacturing, Toyota, doesn't follow this logic.

Although budgeting and planning for a new year always seems to involve a surprising amount of original process, the real issues that lurk in how we conduct ourselves this time of year are about our administrative systems. And to be frank, the survey results that speak to these systems, contained in this month's issue of Cutter Benchmark Review, surprise me. We are all over the map when it comes to budgets, organization, and IT governance, despite an emerging picture of state of the art.

It's time we at CBR step back from benchmarking specific topics and industries to consider the process of performance measurement and benchmarking itself. How should you use benchmarking information? What information should you gather about your company's own internal operations? In general, how should you gather and use performance data? This issue of CBR considers these questions.