Benchmarking Purchasing Costs

We experimented with several approaches. Initially, we would travel the morning of the visit attempting to get to the plant by 10:00 a.m. with plans to stay until 5:00 p.m. While this proved adequate, we found arriving the day before and having dinner with the other company was more beneficial. This allowed us to:

• Build a relationship before starting the formal process the next morning.

• Determine additional areas each company may wish to learn more about that were not included in the original expectations.

• Allow completion of the site visit by about 2:00 p.m., thus allowing reasonable return travel time.

• The previous evening session frequently made us decide to alter our approach to better meet the needs of the people we would be engaging with.

Another key part of the visit is being prepared with the appropriate materials to complete the mission. These materials should include the following:

• Copies and overheads of

— The process flow of your production area.

— Your organization chart.

— The benchmarking purpose statement.

— The data you promised to exchange.

• Also bring

— Pens to write on easels (multicolors).

— Pens to write on the overhead materials (multicolors).

— Blank overhead transparencies.

A must is to write a trip report immediately and hold a debriefing session among those in attendance. At first we were focused on answering and getting answers to the data sheets we had set up. After a few visits, we began finding other items in the organiza­tional or how-they-did-certain-things areas. This led us to con­struct a list of additional questions. In all cases when we asked these questions, we were careful to share comments about ques­tions from Eastman Kodak Company's perspective.

Finally, we that found two, perhaps three people at most, were sufficient to visit the other companies. It is not important to have the same group each time, but it is imperative to have at least one person from the steering team go along in order to provide continuity.

As discussed earlier, our goal initially was to see how our costs for planning, purchasing, and scheduling services compared with other companies. In this area, we were somewhat hampered by the very integrated manufacturing chain at our site (Kodak Park, Rochester, New York) our process is basically broken into three purchasing and planning phases. These are as follows:

• Components manufacturing (chemicals and substrates).

• Film/paper sensitizing (light sensitive emulsions on a sub­strate).

• Converting (cutting and packaging of product to a sales unit).

To be Continued

Lean Six Sigma Consulting   World Class Manufacturing   
Balanced Scorecards  Strategic Tactical Planning  
Supply Chain Inventory Management  Principles of Total Quality Management
  Manufacturing Process Improvement