You work as a systems engineer for BlueWell Inc. Which of the following tools will you use to look outside your own organization to examine how others achieve their performance levels, and what processes they use to reach those levels? 

Answer options:

A. Benchmarking
B. Six Sigma
C. ISO 9001:2000
D. SEI-CMM

improvements or adapt specific best practices, usually with the aim of increasing some aspect of performance. Answer: C is incorrect. The ISO 9001:2000

Benchmarking is the tool used by system assessment process to provide a point of reference by which performance measurements can be reviewed with respect to other organizations. Benchmarking is also recognized as Best Practice Benchmarking or Process Benchmarking. It is a process used in management and mostly useful for strategic management. It is the process of comparing the business processes and performance metrics including cost, cycle time, productivity, or quality to another that is widely considered to be an industry standard benchmark or best practice. It allows organizations to develop plans on how to implement best practice with the aim of increasing some aspect of performance. Benchmarking might be a one-time event, although it is frequently treated as a continual process in which organizations continually seek out to challenge their practices. It allows organizations to develop plans on how to make standard combines the three standards 9001, 9002, and 9003 into one, called 9001. Design and development procedures are required only if a company does in fact engage in the creation of new products. The 2000 version sought to make a radical change in thinking by actually placing the concept of process management front and center ("Process management" was the monitoring and optimizing of a company`s tasks and activities, instead of just inspecting the final product). The ISO 9001:2000 version also demands involvement by upper executives, in order to integrate quality into the business system and avoid delegation of quality functions to junior administrators. Another goal is to improve effectiveness via process performance metrics numerical measurement of the effectiveness of tasks business management strategy, initially implemented by Motorola. As of 2009 it enjoys widespread application in many sectors of industry, although its application is not without controversy. Six Sigma seeks to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing the causes of defects and variability in manufacturing and business processes. It uses a set of quality management methods, including statistical methods, and creates a special infrastructure of people within the organization ("Black Belts", "Green Belts", etc.) who are experts in these methods. Each Six Sigma project carried out within an organization follows a defined sequence of steps and has quantified financial targets (cost reduction or profit increase). The often used Six Sigma symbol is as follows: 

CMMI is now the de facto standard for measuring the maturity of any process. Organizations can be assessed against the CMMI model using Standard CMMI Appraisal Method for Process Improvement (SCAMPI).