STRIVING FOR PERFECTION BUSINESS VOCABULARY IN USE (ADVANCED)

 

BUSINESS VOCABULARY IN USE (ADVANCED) 15. STRIVING FOR PERFECTION

 

A Benchmarking and best practice Benchmarking is the idea that a firm should find out which company performs a particular task best and model its performance on this practice. Companies talk about carrying out a benchmarking exercise. To do this, they benchmark themselves against other companies. Large companies can measure the performance of different departments in relation to each other in an internal benchmarking exercise. Competitive benchmarking involves looking outside the company at how other companies in the same industry do things. Functional benchmarking looks at how the same function such as manufacturing or personnel recruitment is done by non-competitors. Companies can learn a lot from firms who are not their direct B Six sigma quality Quality can be measured in terms of the number of defects per million parts, operations, etc. for example, one sigma equals 690,000 defects per million parts and two sigma means 45,000 defects per million. Even with two sigma quality, the chances of a manufactured product being defective are quite high. EXERCISES 15.1 Complete the sentences with appropriate forms of expressions from A opposite. 1. The manufacturer’s association wants companies to improve manufacturing _________, so it’s offering a new service designed to help companies _________ themselves against the best in their industries. 2. Engineers made replacement parts for the cars by copying the shape and dimensions of the original parts, a process known as _________ _________. 15.2 Read the article relating to the ideas in B opposite. Then answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the questions below about the vocabulary used in the article. WHEN QUALITY IS NOT ENOUGH Quality improvement programmes come in many different flavours. The most common are Total Quality Management (TQM). Six sigma and the Baldrige system promoted by the government-backed National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). There are more similarities than difference between them. The common belief is that companies should aim for ‘zero defects’ in all aspects of their operations, achieved by relentless improvements in business processes. Common techniques include a team-based approach to problem-solving and a highly quantitative approach to measuring results.   1. If something is promoted by a particular organization, does it have that organization’s support? 2. If improvements are relentless, do they keep on happening? 3. Does a qualitative approach to something depend on general descriptions and feelings about it?

ANSWER KEY