Facilitating Communities of Practice and Benchmarking

Abstract

A robust way that LAI stays connected with the consortium is its interactions with groups of people around certain topical areas of interest. These communities of practice have developed products such as the Supplier Networks Transformation Toolset as well as being the nexus for thinking about lean in different settings such as the Product Development Community of Practice. More recently there has been energy around enterprise metrics which is motivating the initiation of its own community of practice. Each of these communities shares a common desire to share information, knowledge, and application experiences within its informal membership. LAI as a neutral broker can pull together these communities for beneficial results for industry and government members.

Benchmarking is often used to gather information and motivate action. From the beginnings of LAI benchmarking has been important with Factory Operations and Supplier major benchmarking efforts. Essentially all LAI research efforts are a kind of fact gathering that contributes to knowledge in a benchmarking sense. Some research projects of course are more focused but in aggregate the research process is very supportive of benchmarking objectives. LAI also offers benchmarking opportunities and participation that is either requested by members or fortuitous by association. An example in the latter case is the collaboration between LAI researchers and McKinsey to collect data on product development practices and correlate that information to performance outcomes.