Benchmarking and Quality (ISO 9001)

ISO 9001
André Lopes, Portugal
Yes, if you select companies who already have certification in ISO9001.

Quality Certification Process and Benchmarking
Zafar Dar, Pakistan
Yes, benchmarking is one of the important steps if you are qoing to implement TQM in your organisation as you have to define targets for quality improvement in products or services. ISO 9001 provides you framework for a Quality Management System that will only certify your own systems and procedures. It also provides you guidelines for continual improvement. But benchmarking is not a requirement of ISO as such.

ISO9001
Walter Berns, Strategy Consultant, United States
Yes, benchmarking is setting a reference point so to speak. Therefore, as it was stated above choose a company that is already certified and use their example. For protocols do an initial audit but make sure they are correctly followed. Then some time later do another audit on that same set of protocols and compare how they had been followed during the time between audits. The first becomes the benchmark. In addition, doing this will check how well training is accomplished.