Gaining Competitive Advantage through Automotive Product Benchmarking for Foresight Vehicles 2002-01-0178

In today's automotive industry, competitiveness necessitates ever more rapid and cost effective new product development. In order to achieve this, it is essential that designers and engineers have some frame of reference from which they can make a decision regarding the competitiveness of existing and future products. When used properly, benchmarking is an effective tool for accomplishing not only this, but also ensuring market leadership in almost any aspect of a company's business. This paper illustrates, by way of examples, how benchmarking can be used in a variety of situations in the automotive industry and for a number of purposes.