Fifth in a nine-part series on people and practices in the world of international business.

A look at how companies use comparisons with other industries to gain a competitive edge, in a process called benchmarking. The programme investigates how a bakery helped an aircraft manufacturer to make better use of its ovens and how the Bradford Community Trust Hospital benchmarked with Britannia Airways to see how it could improve the transportation of patients. The US's Xerox Corporation came up with the idea of benchmarking in the late seventies and it is now considered to be one of the most effective tools for measuring the performance of an organisation. But some experts believe Britain is still lagging behind the rest of the world in using it effectively.