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Development of an intelligent decision support system for benchmarking assessment of business partners
Department of Manufacturing Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong
Keywords Benchmarking, Partnering, Decision-support systems Abstract In today's competitive industrial environment, it is essential that companies are able to focus on their core activities and collaborate with business partners to achieve the common objective of meeting the best satisfaction of customer demands. However, selecting partners based on accumulated experience may not be effective due to subjective judgement and lack of systematic analysis. This paper attempts to propose a partners benchmarking assessment system (PBAS) which incorporates computational intelligence technologies into partners' benchmarking process to support decision making. Evidence suggests that the undesirables occur in companies such as extensive delays in the planned schedule, serious quality problems and cost overruns are, to a certain extent, related to the unfulfilled promises of business partners. In this paper, the PBAS is designed to propose an alternative approach to benchmark the business partners based on case-based reasoning and neural network. To validate the proposed system, a prototype has been developed and tested in an emulated industrial environment. The case example is outlined with analysis of the feasibility of this proposed system based on test results.

H.C.W. Lau, W.B. Lee and Peter K.H. Lau

Introduction Today's industrial environment is rapidly changing due to global marketing competition as well as the fast advances of information technology. The major activity of manufacturing is no longer confined to making things but lies in the systematic processing of knowledge to create value for customers. To meet this challenge, companies have to reorganize the way they handle the value chain activities within and outside their own enterprise. The key to building a successful enterprise mainly depends on the ability to quickly adopt the bestin-class manufacturing strategies and state-of-the-art technologies in order to build stronger collaboration with partners and better relationships with customers. To compete in this ever-changing global environment, a better link with suppliers, customers and even competitors is increasingly important. In fact, the Internet has provided a powerful tool to link up manufacturers, suppliers and business counterparts, thereby creating a dispersed manufacturing network (Lee, 1997; Lee et al., 1998) which is conducive to the formation of
Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 8 No. 5, 2001, pp. 376-395. # MCB University Press, 1463-5771

The authors wish to thank the Department of Manufacturing Engineering and the Research Committee of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University for the support of this research project (Project A/C code: G-T242).

extended enterprise (EE). In general, EE can be defined as an enterprise Intelligent represented by all companies, customers, suppliers and sub-contractors, decision support working collaboratively in the design, development, production and delivery of system a product to the end user (Browne and Zhang, 1999; Gott, 1996). Whether or not a company is able to compete in the local and global marketplace depends heavily on how effectively the company can build up the partnership synergy 377 with their partners including service providers (Lau and Lee, 2000). In particular, it is essential to develop a decision support system to assist managers in selecting the right partners for the right tasks. The current practice of partner selection is relatively subjective and usually based on accumulated experience and judgement together with some recent business records, all of which cannot reflect the actual picture of the overall company performance. Evidence to date suggests that extensive delays in the planned schedule, serious quality problems, cost overruns and an increased number of claims and litigation frequently happen in big and small enterprises. To improve this situation, analytical methods are needed to improve the current practices of partner selection. This paper proposed an intelligent decision support system, incorporating short-listing of candidate companies using case based reasoning, and benchmarking of qualified companies to further evaluate the potential competence and anticipated overall performance of partners with a neural network approach. A case example is covered to demonstrate the assimilation of the proposed system in a company, aiming to assess the overall performance of partners. Research on related topics The decisions related to supplier or partner selection are complicated by the fact that various criteria must be considered in the decision-making process. Dickson (1966) identified 23 different criteria commonly evaluated during the selection process. Another research (Weber et al., 1991) reviewed the partner selection process, classifying it under quantitative and qualitative categories. A linear weighting model has been proposed, focusing on the placement of a weight on each criterion and provision of a total score for each supplier by summing up the supplier's performance on the criteria multiplied by these weights. To work harmoniously with suppliers, there must be a match between partners; therefore, partners selection must be made carefully. According to Limmerick and Cunnington (1993), a successful partners selection needs compatibility between members based on willingness to share, level of technologies, goals, and values of companies. During supplier selection, tradeoff decisions are necessary depending on the actual situation (Barbarosoblu and Yazgac, 1997). In reducing the number of suppliers, companies usually ``streamline'' their current suppliers by cutting out most of their current suppliers based on subjective judgement without a thorough examination of the current and expected performance of these partnering suppliers (Christopher, 1998; Olorunniwo and Hartfield, 2001).

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Many researchers have adopted fuzzy set, statistical model, case-based reasoning, knowledge management, expert systems, and neural networks to aid in the process of partner selection (Ghodsypour and Brien, 1998; Nguyen, 1985; Ng et al., 1998; Vokurka et al., 1996). Each of these systems has their own advantages and disadvantages. For example, it is difficult to define the rules for expert system approach and the membership functions of the fuzzy set theory. More recent researches adopt performance measurement such as financial stability, customer relationship, quality, technical ability, etc., and data mining to evaluate the performance of potential suppliers (Lam et al., 2000; McIvor and Humphreys, 2000; Lau et al., 2000, 2001). However, the measurement is subjective and quantitative which cannot sufficiently reflect the trends of suppliers under comparison. Benchmarking is the systematic comparison of elements of performance in a company against those best practices of relevant companies, obtaining information that will help the observing company to identify and implement improvement (Thor, 1995). Bhutta and Huq (1999) identified seven types of benchmarking based on what is compared, such as performance benchmarking, process benchmarking, and strategic benchmarking, and what the comparison is being made against, such as internal benchmarking, competitive benchmarking, functional benchmarking, and generic benchmarking. As defined, performance measurement in benchmarking is a trend measurement and comparison with other companies. Many researches have conducted studies to identify the criteria for enterprise performance benchmarking (Tipping, 2001; Senyshen, 2001; Rolstadas, 1998; Palaneeswaran and Kumaraswamy, 2000) in terms of people, customers, financial, learning and innovation. However, the survey done so far indicates that there is a lack of research publications related to the design and implementation of a system which is able to provide a reliable and systematic benchmarking assessment approach to support partner selection. To address the issue, this paper attempts to provide some insights to combine the processes of short-listing and benchmarking potential partners prior to final decision, with the proposal of a partners benchmarking assessment system (PBAS). In brief, this system is an intelligent decision support system using case-based reasoning and neural network technologies, capitalizing on their advantages and at the same time offsetting their own deficiencies. Furthermore, a case example is covered to demonstrate its feasibility which is open to further research and discussion. In general, the blending of short-listing partner selection and benchmarking approaches creates a synergetic effect, which allows decision-makers to select the ``best'' partners available in the market, thereby improving the effectiveness and quality of successful partnership. Need of a smart partner selection system The problem of traditional practice of partner selection is the lack of a ``smart'' approach in assessing the suitability of partners for relevant jobs. In normal practice, this assessment process mainly focuses on the financial and costing

perspectives. First, the company short-lists several candidate suppliers or Intelligent business partners who can fulfill the basic criteria, followed by issuing tenders, decision support then analyzing the results of the tendering process with the selection of the one system with the minimal cost. The company seldom analyses the current performance using scientific techniques, not to mention the projected improvement (or downturn) of the potential partners in terms of customer service, on-time 379 delivery, product quality, etc. The outcomes of this partnering process are yet to be considered as satisfactory. Certainly, there is a need to analyze the current and projected performance of the partners before making a final decision. To this end, it seems necessary that there needs to be a methodology to benchmark the potential partners, providing a comparison of performance measures based on a number of relevant criteria. The primary objective of the proposed system is to provide companies with a generic approach to select the most appropriate partners for relevant tasks. It is proposed that the system needs to have the following features: . It is equipped with the facility to short-list the candidate partners based on the relevant criteria to meet requirements of associated jobs. . It is able to perform benchmarking assessment of the short-listed partners with the findings about their current and projected performance, providing the essential information prior to making an important business decision. In general, the proposed system comprises two main functions including shortlisting and benchmarking assessment of candidate partners (see Figure 1). First, a search is conducted for candidate partners based on the past contracts undertaken by them, focusing on their ability to produce the targeted products. Second, evaluation is carried out to benchmark their performance based on relevant factors (to be further explained in the case study) and predict their projected performance, should they be selected as partners at a later stage. In order to select the most appropriate partners, benchmarking assessment method based on computational intelligence technique is adopted. The results from the predicted performance of the short-listed companies will undergo a benchmarking process prior to final selection of the most suitable company as the chosen partner. In brief, the first part of the proposed system relies on the past record of the candidate companies for the short-listing process. Case-based reasoning (CBR) is adopted as the appropriate approach for this purpose. Generally speaking, CBR is a rich and knowledge-intensive method for capturing past experiences, enhancing existing problem-solving methods and improving the overall
Figure 1. The partner selection model

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learning capabilities of machines (Schank, 1982). The CBR model mirrors the problem-solving approach taken by practitioners who solve current problems using past experiences and historical records. CBR models provide decision support to managers through an interactive question and answer session. In CBR, a new problem or situation case is compared with a case base which contains information regarding a specific problem situation and its associated solution. The process involved in CBR can be represented by a schematic cycle as shown in Figure 2: (1) Retrieve the most similar case(s). (2) Reuse the case(s) to attempt to solve the problem. (3) Revise the proposed solution if necessary. (4) Retain the solution as part of a new case. The CBR model first retrieves the list from the contract case library, and reuses the cases, then short-lists the candidate suppliers and revises the proposed solution if required. The second part of the proposed system is related to benchmarking assessment. A benchmarking model is used to select the most appropriate partners, providing relevant facts and data about current as well as projected performance based on various factors for comparison among the short-listed partners. Specific measures should be aligned with strategic objectives to ensure that the factors for benchmarking are consistent with corporate goals. The benchmarking model predicts, based on the trends of past data, how well (or poor) a company will be performing over the forthcoming period of time. As the model predicts the performance of the partners with the machine learning feature based on past input data and historical results, neural network (NN) lends itself

Figure 2. The CBR cycle

to be the most appropriate method with its power for predicting the likely Intelligent outcome based on what it has learned before from previous historical data. decision support In brief, NN is a computer with an internal structure that imitates the system workings of the human brain and the nervous system (Stock, 1997). It is a parallel distributed processing system composed of processing entities called neurons, the connection strengths between which are weights which are 381 adjusted to store experiential knowledge and make it available for later use in prediction, clustering, and classification (Haykin, 1994). In theory, the formation of NN is similar to the formation of neural pathways in the brain as the task is practiced. In NN, nodes are typically arranged in layers, with the connections running between layers. Figure 3 shows a simple neural network with three-tier layer, the input layer, the hidden layer, and the output layer. NN is capable of learning from its mistakes by adjusting the weight of the nodes, so that repetitive tasks can be accomplished more accurately the more times it is trained (Dhar and Stein, 1997). Implementation of PBAS The proposed system consists of the CBR model for short-listing partners and the NN model for benchmarking those partners to suggest the most suitable one(s). It is assumed that the companies using PBAS should have records of the best-in-class performance benchmarking reference in its relevant industry and detailed information on candidate partners. The operations of PBAS are shown in Figure 4. Identifying the requirements The first step of the process is to identify the required core competencies of the future partners in light of the business project or new product to be launched. Short-listing candidate partners The purpose of this stage is to select those partners that are competent to provide the support as required. The candidate partners are assessed and evaluated against the set criteria based on the information of the projected

Figure 3. The neural network model

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Figure 4. The PBAS model

tasks to be undertaken. In this respect, a CBR model is deployed to short-list the candidate partners based on their previous records and overall performance. To evaluate the suitability of the candidate partners to undertake certain specific tasks of a product development project, eight assessment factors including product name, product type, technology, material, production cost, scrap rate and number of returns are suggested to be used to differentiate the capabilities of individual partners. Each assessment factor carries certain

weight (W) which signifies the importance of the relevant factor. After the Intelligent completion of each job, partnered companies are assessed against the factors decision support and the score points are recorded in the CBR repository. In this short-listing system process, the specifications for each assessment factor are specified based on the nature of the project. The CBR model retrieves the potential partners, from the case library, which most closely meet the specifications set out by the user 383 using the nearest neighbour retrieval function (Kolodner, 1993). The retrieved case with the highest aggregate match score represents the nearest match, and cases with a lower score are ranked beneath the highest scoring case. Each potential partner will have a performance score (PS) for each category. These scores are then multiplied by the weights assigned to attain a total weighted score. n X PSi Wi Total weighted score
i1

The CBR model holds the information about each partner with the format of the specified case structure to simplify retrieval. Each case structure is composed of a number of fields representing assessment factors as shown below: . product name; . product type; . technology; . material; . production cost; . scrap rate; . number of returns; . delivery time; . location; . company name; . company number; . technology performance score (PS); . quality PS; . cost PS; . delivery PS; . materials PS; . location PS. To verify the competence level of the potential partners retrieved from the case library, the total weighted score of each of them is compared with the ideal score assigned by the user group. For example, the ideal score is, say, 0.8 and if

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any of the partners have achieved a total score greater than this ideal score, they are considered to be suitable. If there are no competent partners, the model will advise the users to find new partners or level the qualified threshold point. If there are potential partners, further analysis will be carried out as outlined in the following context. Benchmarking short-listed partners The purpose of this stage is to evaluated the projected performance of the short-listed partners that have been identified in the previous stage using neural network approach. This involves analyzing the relevant characteristics used in establishing a close relationship with a partner as shown in Figure 5. The input layer of the neural network includes five categories: (1) Customer service (CS): the customer perspective focuses on customer response time, as well as customer acquisition, retention, satisfaction and profitability measure. (2) Delivery efficiency (DE): this includes percentage of on-time delivery, and cycle time.

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Figure 5. Mapping of input and output layers of neural network

(3) Financial status (FS): the financial perspective concentrates on the Intelligent profitability and liquidity, market share, and credit rating. decision support (4) Production cost (PC): the production cost perspective contains system information about the unit cost and the delivery cost in producing the products. (5) Quality (Q): the quality standard of the company is measured by the 385 scrap rate and return rate when producing the product, and the number of claims made by customers. Each category is assigned with a score ranging from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent). Five sets of records containing the latest performance results of associated partner company are mapped to the input layer of the neural network. After processing, the system will give six output nodes, with the scores, 1.5 (strongly negative), 1 (negative), 0 (not sure), +1 (positive), +1.5 (strongly positive), in order to comment on the performance of the potential partners: . reputation; . reliability of quality; . supports of customer service; . consistence of delivery time; . competitiveness of cost; . culture of company improvement. The comments given by the neural network engine are then compared with the best-in-class performance standard in order to benchmark the partner companies, the qualified one(s) will be selected. An example of the performance record based on financial status, production cost, quality, delivery efficiency and customer service is given in Figure 6. This example indicates that the financial status of the company is getting better, showing an upturn tendency in production cost and quality, and a decline in delivery efficiency and customers. Moreover, it further suggests that the company is putting its effort in producing high quality product at the expense of its service to customers. The performance of the neural network depends greatly on the training sets supplied. Therefore, enough training for the model is essential, especially those actual contracts made in which decisions have been verified rather than those cases without realistic records. This indicates that it is better to choose those contracts in which the partner has successfully produced the product, or those contracts where the partner has failed in fulfilling its promises. Furthermore, it is desirable to have better distribution of training sets that cover as many scenarios as possible, than to have one scenario case dominating all others as this would undermine the performance of the neural network model. After the partners are selected and the jobs are assigned to them, performance reviews of the selected partners are carried out continuously with

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Figure 6. Performance of a company based on past records

latest data input to the CBR case library to update the records. This ensures that PBAS is acquiring more knowledge and experience through the learning process over time. Case example To validate the proposed system, a prototype has been developed and tested in BL Limited (BLL), which produces handheld products such as electronic dictionaries, multilingual translating machines, personal organizers, pagers, etc. In this case example, the personal digital administrator (PDA) is chosen as the reference product to validate the feasibility of this benchmarking assessment system in an actual industrial environment. Problems in partner selection BLL outsources the production of the components, such as case, LCD screen, button pad, etc., to other business partners followed by assembly in plants located in mainland China. The procedures that BLL uses to select partners are considered to be experience-based without any analytical approach. The first step is the scanning process for potential partners according to the previous contracts, then followed by issuing the new contract to each potential partner and selecting the one with the best offer in terms of price. However, such selection process often leads to unexpected outcomes such as late delivery, high return rates, high claims rates, etc. In addition, this partnering practice is not consistent, resulting in different partners being selected for the same nature of job in various contracts due to the diverse personal views of decision makers. Therefore, BLL has decided to improve this situation by adopting the PBAS into the partner selection process. Implementation of the PBAS The PBAS is a hybrid decision support system encompassing case-based reasoning and neural network. It is built using Visual Basic as the main development program, together with Acknosoft Kaidara Commerce

software[1], which is used to construct the case library based on the contract Intelligent database which BLL adopts to store the job contracts, and Qnet[2] for the decision support implementation of NN benchmarking model. BLL contains a database system system with the records of the performance of business partners on contracts carried out previously including records of the best-in-class performance benchmarks in the industry. Identifying the product information The new personal organizer PDA 1002 features lightest weight, infrared ready, enhanced security options and more. BLL decided to outsource the production of the PDA cover to reduce the cost of new technology investment. The product specifications for PDA 1002 cover are shown in Table I. Short-listing candidate partners Once the assessment factors are identified, the next step is to assign the weights to the relevant factors, representing their various levels of importance related to specific product (see Figure 7). The factors include technology, quality, cost, delivery, materials and location. After assigning the weights for the assessment factors, the specifications of which are then entered as shown in Figure 8. Notice that not all of them require the input data. The model then retrieves the contracts of those candidate partners which most closely meet the specifications assigned by BLL. Each case is given a similarity percentage to show how close the case matches the user requirements. The retrieved case with the highest similarity percentage represents the nearest match, and cases with a lower percentage are ranked beneath the highest percentage case. This is illustrated in Figures 9 and 10. The top five companies are retrieved, with TCA Ltd. scoring the highest percentage and ESL Ltd the lowest. Once the potential partners are retrieved, the model multiplies the performance scores of each case to the weights assigned earlier to obtain a total weighted score. For example the total weighted score for TCA Ltd is (1 0.3 + 0.75 0.2 + 0.80 0.1 + 0.95 0.1 + 0.72 0.2 + 1 0.1) = 0.87. In this case example, shown in Figure 11, the acceptance level is set to 0.8, only TCA Ltd,
Assessment factors Product name Product type Technology Material Production cost Scrap rate Number of returns Delivery time Specifications PDA 1002 PDA cover Expertise in light product Titanium Less than 2,500 5 per cent 2 per cent Less than 30 days

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Table I. Product criteria for PDA 1002

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Figure 7. Assigning weight for each performance category

WS Ltd, and PCS Ltd are short-listed. These three short-listed partners are passed for benchmarking assessment. Benchmarking potential partners Before using the system to benchmark the short-listed partners, training is required to produce reliable output of the neural network. BLL has trained the NN benchmarking model with 100 sets of test data based on previous actual performance results. The three partners short-listed from the previous stage are then required to compare their performance with the best-in-class performance. There are five categories: (1) customer service (CS); (2) delivery efficiency (DE); (3) financial status (FS); (4) product cost (PC); and (5) quality (Q). Figures 12 and 13 show the data and the chart of the performance history of relevant short-listed partners. Figure 13 shows that the financial status of TCA Ltd is stable, and there is an improving performance in the area of production cost and quality. In addition, it is also facing a falling performance in delivery efficiency and customer service, thus indicating that it is moving towards the improvement of production cost and quality at the expense of schedule commitment and

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Figure 8. Defining partners selection criteria

customer satisfaction. This results in a negative reputation as customer satisfaction rate is on the decline. It is difficult to analyze the projected performance of TCA Ltd as there is an increase and drop in different areas. Similarly, WS Ltd produces high quality products and provides good customer services. However, there are falling performances on financial stability, and production costs indicate that WS Ltd invests a lot in producing high quality products but they cannot keep the production cost low. Based on the previous performance, it is difficult to conclude the projected performance and the reputation of WS Ltd. For PCS Ltd, it shows an increasing performance in most of the categories except customer service. Based on this analysis, the results of the benchmarking score of the three potential partners are given in Figure 14. The best-in-class performance is strongly positive in reputation, reliability of quality, delivery consistency, and competitiveness of cost, and with a positive performance on improvement and customer support. Based on this benchmarking assessment process, BLL has selected PCS Ltd as a business partner. To evaluate the performance of the proposed PBAS, BLL has used the proposed system to select partners in a number of projects and the results are

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Figure 9. Retrieved case

Figure 10. Summary of retrieved cases

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Figure 11. Calculation of total weighted score

Figure 12. Suppliers' past five months' performance records

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Figure 13. Performance history

shown in Table II. Results indicate that the adoption of PBAS is a positive Intelligent move of BLL although there is still room for further improvement of the decision support usefulness of the proposed system which is yet to be considered as ideal. In system order to improve the reliability of PBAS, more knowledge input to train the NN is needed. This requires more expertise judgement to review and verify the accuracy of the input and output data of the NN. Conclusion In this paper, an intelligent benchmarking assessment system is introduced. The proposed system aims to improve the current practice of partner selection, adopting the computational intelligence technologies into the traditional partner selection process with the assimilation of case-based reasoning and

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Figure 14. Results of the benchmarking assessment system

By human (%) BLL satisfactory rate Delay in delivery Quality below standard Customer claims 60 20 30 25

By PBAS (%) 75 15 25 22

BLL expected (%) 10 15 15 Table II. Supplier selection performance by human and by PBAS

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neural network to form the integrated system for evaluation of potential partners prior to final decision. The case study shows that the PBAS helps improve the partner selection process although the results cannot yet be considered as perfect. Further research on the infrastructure framework of the two models (case-based reasoning and neural network) is needed in order to enhance the benefits of the whole system. In general, the proposed system captures the knowledge of potential partners with the support of case-based reasoning which performs analysis to find matched candidates, and provides information on projected performance of them through a benchmarking process through a trained neural network which learns through past experience. This approach is favorable to the progressive injection of intelligence to the proposed system through the embraced machine learning capability, thereby contributing to the development of a benchmarking assessment system to support the decision making process.
Notes 1. http://www.acknosoft.com/ 2. http://qnetv2k.com/ References Barbarosoblu, G. and Yazgac, T. (1997), ``An application of the analytic hierarchy process to the supplier selection problem'', Production and Inventory Management Journal, Vol. 38 No. 1, pp. 14-21. Bhutta, K.S. and Huq, F. (1999), ``Benchmarking best practices: an integrated approach'', Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 6 No. 3, pp. 254-68. Browne, J. and Zhang, J. (1999), ``Extended and virtual enterprise similarities and differences'', International Journal of Agile Management Systems, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 30-6. Christopher, M. (1998), Logistics and Supply Chain Management: Strategies for Reducing Costs and Improving Services, 2nd ed., Pitman Publications, London. Dhar, V. and Stein, R. (1997), Intelligent Decision Support Methods: The Science of Knowledge Work, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Dickson, G.W. (1966), ``An analysis of vendor selection systems and decisions'', Journal of Purchasing, Vol. 2 No. 1, pp. 28-41. Ghodsypour, S.H. and Brien, C.O. (1998), ``A decision support system for supplier selection using an integrated analytic hierarchy process and linear programming'', International Journal of Production Economics, Vol. 56-57, pp. 199-212. Gott, B. (1996), Empowered Engineering for the Extended Enterprise A Management Guide, Cambridge, UK. Haykin, S. (1994), Neural Networks, A Comprehensive Foundation, Macmillan, New York, NY. Kolodner, J.L. (1993), Case-based Reasoning, Morgan Kaufmann, San Mateo, CA. Lam, K.C., Ng, T., Hu, T., Skitmore, M. and Cheung, S.O. (2000), ``Decision support system for contractor pre-qualification artificial neural network model'', Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, Vol. 7 No. 3, pp. 251-66. Lau, H.C.W. and Lee, W.B. (2000), ``On a responsive supply chain information system'', International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, Vol. 30 No. 7/8, pp. 598-610.

Lau, H.C.W., Chin, K.S., Pun, K.F. and Ning, A. (2000), ``Decision supporting functionality in a virtual enterprise network'', Expert Systems with Applications, Vol. 19, pp. 261-70. Lau, H.C.W., Lau, P.K.H., Chan, F.T.S. and Ip, R.W.L. (2001), ``A real time performance measurement technique for dispersed manufacturing'', Measuring Business Excellence, Vol. 5 No. 1, pp. 9-15. Lee, W.B. (1997), Proposal of a Dispersed Network Production System Factory and Construction (in Chinese), The Ministry of Machinery Industries, Beijing, Vol. 5, p. 145. Lee, W.B., Lam, F.W. and Choy, K.L. (1998), ``Dispersed network manufacturing a Hong Kong model'', Proceedings of the Eighth International Manufacturing Conference, May, Singapore, pp. 18-25. Limmerick, D. and Cunnington, B. (1993), Managing the New Organisation A Blue Print for Network and Strategic Alliances, Business and Professional Publishing, Sydney. McIvor, R.T. and Humphreys, P.K. (2000), ``A case-based reasoning approach to the make or buy decision'', Integrated Manufacturing Systems, Vol. 11 No. 5, pp. 295-310. Ng, S.T., Smith, N.J. and Skitmore, R.M. (1998), ``A case-based reasoning model for contractor prequalification'', International Journal of Construction Information Technology, Vol. 6, pp. 47-61. Nguyen, V.U. (1985), ``Tender evaluation by fuzzy sets'', Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, ASCE, Vol. 111, pp. 231-43. Olorunniwo, F. and Hartfield, T. (2001), ``Strategic partnering when the supply base is limited: a case study'', Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 101 No. 1, pp. 47-52. Palaneeswaran, E. and Kumaraswamy, M.M. (2000), ``Benchmarking contractor selection practices in public-sector construction a proposed model'', Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, Vol. 7 No. 3, pp. 285-99. Rolstadas, J. (1998), ``Enterprise performance measurement'', International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 18, No. 9/10, pp. 989-99. Schank, R.C. (1982), Dynamic Memory: The Theory of Reminding and Learning in Computers and People, Cambridge University Press, NY. Senyshen, M. (2001), ``Performance measurement at a furniture company'', BetterManagement.com, http://www.bettermanagement.com Stock, J.R. (1997), ``Applying theories from other disciplines to logistics'', International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, Vol. 27 No. 9/10, pp. 515-39. Thor, C.G. (1995), Practical Benchmarking for Mutual Improvement, Productivity Press, Portland, OR. Tipping, M. (2001), ``New views of performance'', BetterManagement.com, http:// www.bettermanagement.com Vokurka, R.J., Choobineh, J. and Vadi, L. (1996), ``A prototype expert system for the evaluation and selection of potential suppliers'', International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 16 No. 12, pp. 106-27. Weber, C., Current, J. and Benton, W. (1991), ``Vender selection criteria and methods'', European Journal of Operational Research, Vol. 50 No. 1, pp. 2-18.

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