Robert C. Camp headed up the now-famous study at Xerox in which the
buzzword “benchmarking” was coined in late 1980. When asked whether the
best work practices necessarily improve the bottom line, he replied: “the full
definition of benchmarking is finding and implementing best practices in our
business, practices that meet customer requirements. So the flywheel on finding
the very best, is ‘Does this meet customer requirements?’ There is a cost of
quality that exceeds customer requirements. The basic objective is satisfying
the customer, so that is the limiter”