7. Glossary

Function

Action of a product or one of its components expressed exclusively in terms of purpose. A function is expressed by an infinitive verb followed by a complement. It must disregard any reference to solutions.

Benchmarking (calibration)

The activity of comparing services, products, processes or organizations in order to obtain useful information for improving one's own performance.

The gap between your own company and the benchmark needs to be quantified and analyzed in order to define improvement targets. The gap can be in terms of processes, products, strategies or competition.