D2D: A Quality Winner’s Approach to Benchmarking Available to Purchase

Design to Distribution Ltd (D2D) is a wholly owned subsidiary of the ICL group. It gained this status in 1993, having previously been ICL Manufacturing Division. Since 1991 it has strategically penetrated the contract manufacturing market and now aims to provide a total electronics manufacturing service to external customers. It has developed a total solution capacity whereby it is able to offer its customers expertise, advanced manufacturing technology, and purchasing power to enable them to release their capital and resources to concentrate on their core competences. D2D have an established total quality culture and have benefited significantly from the resultant enhanced customer satisfaction and reduced cost of non‐conformance. It constantly searches for process improvement tools and benchmarking is one tool D2D employs. However, D2D has concentrated benchmarking efforts on results‐driven studies carried out by consultants. Although this provides a useful introduction to benchmarking, the next step for D2D to achieve its goal of worldwide competitiveness is a more process‐driven approach. Reviews the construction of benchmarking projects previously carried out by D2D and suggests a tool to help overcome one of the main pitfalls of process‐driven benchmarking, that of appropriate process selection.