"We use industry best practices."

"Best practices are good practices that have worked well elsewhere. They are proven and have produced successful results." Actually, this definition could be applied to the short-lived, but successful IPOs of many 'dot.com' companies earlier this year (2000). Were they World Class? I don't think so! The point is that 'best practices' criteria change over time, during economic changes and through management fads.

Here's one company's example of criteria for 'Industry Best Practices' relevant to the acquisition processes:

• Activity Based Costing
• Alternative Dispute resolution (ADR)
• Automation
• Benchmarking
• Concurrent Development of Product and Process Contracting
• Core Capabilities & Core Rigidities
• Earned Value
• Empowerment: empowered teams; empowered employees
• Information Technology
• Alignment with Business Strategy
• Integrated Product and Process Development (IPPD)
• Ownership and Commitment
• Partnering
• Process Maturation
• Project Leadership
• Quality Functional Deployment (QFD)
• Reengineering
• Risk Management
• Robust Engineering
• Seamless Management
• Service Contracting
• Simulation Based Acquisition (SBA)
• Suppliers - Minimize Number of First Tier
• Target Pricing
• Total Quality Development
• Total Quality Management (TQM)
• Toyota Production System¡ Integrated Product Teams (IPTs)
• Just in Time Supplies
• Lean Manufacturing
• Modeling and Simulation (Simulation Based Acquisition)
• Virtual Enterprise

Yipes! This is another collection of buzzwords. What characterizes these as 'Best Practices' and by whom? And how many companies even validate their operations to such a list?