BENCHMARKING AS OPPORTUNITY FOR MANAGEMENT AND EDUCATION

Benchmarking is one of the managerial methods used in many industries, but it could be applied with success in the educational system as well. In the introductory part of the paper, we present some features of modern benchmarking. Unfortunately, Romanian managers have strong reservations toward applying benchmarking in their organizations. In order to show their poor knowledge about benchmarking, we developed a research based on a questionnaire. The respondents were managers in small, medium or big organizations, who develop projects with "Lucian Blaga" University of Sibiu. The paper presents only a part of the results. One of the questions asked respondents to indicate specific attributes for benchmarking. They could choose the attributes from a list and they could also indicate more attributes. Unfortunately, many respondents have chosen the wrong attributes from the list. Therefore, we believe that the Romanian academic environment should be more involved in the dissemination of management knowledge in industry. In this context, we suggested postgraduate training courses for managers and engineers - who are involved in programs with universities - using an original tool: a "lean-training" process, based on benchmarking.