Best Practices In Rubber Wood Process Industry In Thailand Competitiveness

Many companies are seeking methodology to improve performance and sustain competitive advantage. And many strategic techniques and methodology have been developed for business improvement. Performance benchmarking is one of business management tools has been proven its effectiveness to improve performance in many areas. The rubber subsector is a significant part of Thailand’s economy. Rubber is a significant source of revenue of more than one million smallholder farming families and dozens of related businesses including employment, processors of rubber products and rubber wood products as well as exportation.For this study has the objective of establishing a theoretical framework for benchmarking as called performance benchmarking framework and presents techniques for designing and constructing benchmarks that reflect performance of enterprises in rubber wood industry. This study aims to specify five dimensions for benchmarking each manufacturers in rubber wood industry including raw material management, strategic management, human resource management, operation management and marketing management. And identify their best practices performance in rubber wood industry. Therefore, this study had selected performance benchmarking framework to assess and find best practices as knowledge or know-how from learning from other companies and competitors to improve the competitive advantage and build potential in rubber wood process industry for global competition.This study is intently exploratory to identify the best practices in rubber wood process industry in Thailand competitiveness. This study applied a qualitative research approach and an in-depth interview method. The qualitative data from this study were sustained through secondary resources and observation during the site visits. Most importantly, data was sustained from in-depth interview with twenty senior executives from rubber wood process manufacture that played significant roles in developing the rubber-wood process industry that located in Surat Thani province and Nakhon Srithammarat province, Thailand. These actors are representatives from both the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) rubber wood process manufacturer.The results from the study found that the best practices to extend and sustain competitive advantages of rubber wood process industry in the best raw material management practices such as setup the middle market of rubber wood same as the latex to control the price of wood, contract signing or contract farming is a good solution practice for the coordination among a primary factory and focus on procurement process to select quality raw materials with direct to the factory standards. For the best strategic management practices including establish rubber wood process manufacturer’s cluster, integrating sustainable development strategy and awareness with quality standard and corporate social responsibility (CRS). For the best human resource management practices such as development human resource to make potential in wood science and technology, awareness to support knowledge and well-being together with the organization growth and the corporation between executives and staff to develop the product. For the best operation management practices including focus on production technology, productivity and labor productivity and implement automating system for operating in manufacturing process beside that rubber wood manufactures should concentrate on green production and green environment. For the best marketing management practice including rubber wood manufacturers should change from original equipment manufacturer (OEM) become to original brand name manufacturer (OBM) and conduct transportation networks, communication networks and restructure the overall logistics structure.Moreover, the major contributions to knowledge from this study that the emphasis in performance benchmarking framework is on how performance operates and how to transfer proven good to best practices depend on the idea that learning can be made from organizations inside the rubber wood industry or sector of the benchmarking party. Performance benchmarking framework is very useful for evaluating other functions within a rubber wood industry such as research and development (R&D), purchasing, marketing, human resource management, operation management and the general corporate staff.