Final answer:
When a company is looking for an established, superlative product as a guide for its new product, it is engaging in benchmarking. This process involves comparing one's business processes and performance metrics to industry bests or best practices from other companies. Benchmarking is distinct from forecasting, implementing quality standards, or implementing quality control.
Step-by-step explanation:
When a company looks to an established, superlative product as a guide for its new product, it is benchmarking. Benchmarking is a process where companies measure the quality of their policies, products, programs, strategies, etc., against standard measurements or best practices from other companies. By doing this, they aim to determine how well they are performing and where their improvement areas are.
Through benchmarking, organizations try to improve their processes and products by learning from others and implementing the best practices discovered through the process. It's not about copying but rather trying to understand how these best practices can be adapted to fit the unique aspects of the company, thereby achieving superior performance.
It's important to distinguish benchmarking from other similar-sounding practices. For example, forecasting is the process of making predictions about future events based on past and present data, while implementing quality standards means setting the criteria for product or service quality within the company and implementing quality control refers to the operational techniques and activities used to fulfill requirements for quality.