A business excellence approach to generic benchmarking in SMEs

Aims to carry out generic benchmarking within a group of SMEs involved in applying the business excellence model as part of TQM improvement initiatives. Examines how generic benchmarking enables business excellence to be developed in the organisations. A lot of existing studies on business excellence and SMEs assume that large organisation praxis can be scaled down and applied to SMEs. There is need for studies which allow SMEs to develop their own understanding of business excellence and share best practice across SMEs. First, examines 20 SME case studies to determine critical success factors in business excellence for the SMEs. Second, chooses a sub‐group of eight SMEs for a more detailed study. Third, from these benchmarking studies, chooses a final group of three organisations to develop and implement benchmarked strengths using focus groups. The findings show how benchmarking can enable SMEs to increase the rate of improvement of their quality initiatives.