The improvement of Thai toy industry's competitiveness : a benchmarking approach

Abstract

Benchmarks and improves the competitiveness of Thai toy industry by using benchmarking technique. The phases of benchmarking process in this research composed of 4 steps. The first step is to select the process, the benchmarking study will focus on, by considering the process impact on Thai toy's manufactures performance indicator (PI) which is highly important while the performance is low. The second step is to search for and identify suitable benchmarking partner as the foreign factory. The third step is to collect data in benchmark partners. And the last step is to analyze and summarize the difference in methods performed between case study manufacture and the benchmarked partner. Types of critical success factor (CSF) was identified in this thesis emphasized on quality, cost, delivery and skill. After comparing the indicator performance level of the sample factory against benchmarking partners, The author concluded that defect percentage, claim percentage and toy design performance level of the sample factory were the less value. For % defect, it is related with cost of product. The sample factory has the value of % claim at 8.53% defect at 3.58%, % toy design performance at 18.7 % and cost of product at 78.3% when compare with price. This research selected both 3 PIs of the sample factory to compare with the benchmarking partners for finding the improvement plan. Finally, the author presented the improvement plan for the sample factory by set the target of claim at 5.0 %, % defect at 1.7% that relate with cost of product at 76.6% and design performance to 40%. So, this research has a scope to study and using benchmarking technique to improve toy manufactures competitiveness.