Knowledge management helps to avoid loss of knowledge, focuses on expertise and allows to accumulate knowledge of the work processes in its different forms, ensuring its permanence. The term benchmarking originates from a term used by surveyors, serving to designate a mark or reference a standard. Benchmarking can be considered as a science with five different generations and have produced significant changes in the scope of its objectives. There is a relationship between knowledge management and benchmarking, as through benchmarking practice, companies/organizations can improve their management skills in order to achieve equal or better results than its competitors.

According to Deming, any significant human activity leads to acquiring the know-how involved and the skills through which the activity can be developed. The process can be learned, absorbed, transmitted and shared with others.In the primitive communities, the traditional doctor and the midwife have been living repositories of distilled experience in community life. Even in modern organizations, highly sophisticated knowledge—know-how in terms of how to get results and how to avoid the mistakes—often lies mainly in people’s minds.

Mechanisms for sharing interactive knowledge have always been used. Conversations, village and town meetings, conclaves, professional consultations, meetings, workshops, and conferences—all work to enable individuals to share what they know with others in a relevant area of knowledge. Migration of people has been a main form of knowledge transfer between continents. Today, a variety of technologies, from computers to videoconferencing for distance learning, provide opportunities to disseminate know-how and insights quickly worldwide.

Knowledge Management, Benchmarking