Best Practices In Rubber Wood Process Industry In Thailand Competitiveness

Many companies are seeking methodology to improve performance and sustaincompetitive advantage. And many strategic techniques and methodology have beendeveloped for business improvement. Performance benchmarking is one of businessmanagement 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 significantsource of revenue of more than one million smallholder farming families and dozens ofrelated businesses including employment, processors of rubber products and rubber woodproducts as well as exportation.For this study has the objective of establishing a theoretical framework forbenchmarking as called performance benchmarking framework and presents techniques fordesigning and constructing benchmarks that reflect performance of enterprises in rubberwood industry. This study aims to specify five dimensions for benchmarking eachmanufacturers in rubber wood industry including raw material management, strategicmanagement, human resource management, operation management and marketingmanagement. And identify their best practices performance in rubber wood industry.Therefore, this study had selected performance benchmarking framework to assess and findbest practices as knowledge or know-how from learning from other companies andcompetitors to improve the competitive advantage and build potential in rubber wood processindustry for global competition.This study is intently exploratory to identify the best practices in rubber wood processindustry in Thailand competitiveness. This study applied a qualitative research approach andan in-depth interview method. The qualitative data from this study were sustained throughsecondary resources and observation during the site visits. Most importantly, data wassustained from in-depth interview with twenty senior executives from rubber wood processmanufacture that played significant roles in developing the rubber-wood process industry thatlocated in Surat Thani province and Nakhon Srithammarat province, Thailand. These actorsare representatives from both the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) rubber wood processmanufacturer.The results from the study found that the best practices to extend and sustaincompetitive advantages of rubber wood process industry in the best raw material managementpractices such as setup the middle market of rubber wood same as the latex to control theprice of wood, contract signing or contract farming is a good solution practice for thecoordination among a primary factory and focus on procurement process to select quality rawmaterials with direct to the factory standards. For the best strategic management practicesincluding establish rubber wood process manufacturer‘s cluster, integrating sustainabledevelopment strategy and awareness with quality standard and corporate social responsibility(CRS). For the best human resource management practices such as development humanresource to make potential in wood science and technology, awareness to support knowledgeand well-being together with the organization growth and the corporation between executivesand staff to develop the product. For the best operation management practices including focuson production technology, productivity and labor productivity and implement automating system for operating in manufacturing process beside that rubber wood manufactures shouldconcentrate on green production and green environment. For the best marketing managementpractice including rubber wood manufacturers should change from original equipmentmanufacturer (OEM) become to original brand name manufacturer (OBM) and conducttransportation networks, communication networks and restructure the overall logisticsstructure.Moreover, the major contributions to knowledge from this study that the emphasis inperformance benchmarking framework is on how performance operates and how to transferproven good to best practices depend on the idea that learning can be made fromorganizations inside the rubber wood industry or sector of the benchmarking party.Performance benchmarking framework is very useful for evaluating other functions within arubber wood industry such as research and development (R&D), purchasing, marketing,human resource management, operation management and the general corporate staff.