Since the mid-1980s, when we recognized that the traditional financially-oriented performance measurement systems no longer met the requirements of modern enterprises, we have seen a significant growth in research and development efforts concerning performance measurement by academics, consultants and practitioners, resulting in the emergence of various frameworks, tools and techniques for performance measurement.
The need of performance measurement systems at different levels of decision-making, either in the industrial or service contexts, is undoubtedly not something new. Continuous improvement policies, business process re-engineering techniques and benchmarking studies all incorporate the definition of a proper set of indicators for measuring performance, analysing and diagnosing critical issues, validating new action proposals and evaluating actual improvements.
What are the main benefits and pitfalls coming out of the adoption of performance measurement systems? What does it cost to measure performance? What are the ‘de facto’ standards currently available? How to use performance measurement frameworks for benchmarking purposes?
These are just a few of the questions that dominate the discussion in the industrial and research community working in this important area.
However, research reporting the impact, success and failure of performance measurement systems, both in the private and public sectors, is scarce. Thus, the objective of this special issue was to collect and present experiences and findings of an international research community working in this area.
The research papers collected in this special issue were first presented and discussed at the 2nd (Hannover, 2002) and 3rd (Bergamo, 2003) workshops of the IFIP WG5.7 Special Interest Group on Performance Measurement. They were further developed and refined following referees’ comments for publication in this special issue.
This special issue represents a unique blend of knowledge on implementation of performance measurement systems in both private and public sectors.
The special issue is organized in four sections. The first section presenting the context and the current knowledge; the second and third sections presenting impact of performance measurement implementations in the private and public sectors respectively, and the final section covering organizational and future aspects.
In the first section, the paper by Mike Bourne introduces the need for researching the dynamics of success and failure of the implementation of performance measurement systems. It is followed by a paper by Monica Franco-Santos and Mike Bourne, which summarizes the current knowledge, in the form of a literature review, on how companies manage through measures. The third paper by Pietro Micheli and Mike Kennerley presents a similar review of literature on performance measurement in the public and non-profit sectors.
The three papers of the second section present case-study experiences and empirical research results on performance measurement system implementations in private industrial enterprises. The first of these by Trevor Turner et al. reports on the implementation and impact of performance measures in two SMEs. The paper by Sai Nudurupati and Umit Bititci highlights the impact of IT-supported performance measurement systems in two SMEs and two larger organizations. The third paper by Yves Ducq and Bruno Vallespir reports on how performance measurements have been defined and aggregated using GRAI grids and actigrams in the aeronautical industry.
The third section draws together experiences of performance measurement system implementations in the public sector. The first paper of this section by Paula Mettänen presents a case study of a performance measurement implementation in a research organization. The second paper by Efstathios Tapinos et al. reports on the impact of performance measurement systems in a university. The final paper of this section by Bart Cole and Christine Cooper considers the use and impact of performance indicators in the rail industry.
The fourth and final section brings together some generic issues. A common trend emerging in performance measurement system implementations is that business processes drive performance – and thus performance measures – are organized around business processes. This leads to the requirement of deploying performance measures to business process-based teams, which is the subject of the penultimate paper by Kepa Mendibil and Jillian MacBryde. The final paper of the special issue by David Walters presents a vision of performance planning and control in new, virtual, business structures.
Umit Bititci
Sergio Cavalieri
Gregor von Cieminski
Acknowledgments
Umit Bititci
, MSc, PhD, CEng, MIEE, FIOM, MILT, is a Professor at the University of Strathclyde and also the Director of the Centre for Strategic Manufacturing (CSM). He is the current Chairman of IFIP WG5.7, specializing in Integrated Production Management, and a past Vice Chairman of the Institute of Operations Management. As a management professional, consultant and an academic he has over 20 years of experience working with a wide spectrum of UK, European and Asian companies on Strategy Management, Performance Measurement, Value Development, Supply-chain Management and Business Process Improvement. As the Director of the CSM, he has been responsible for a number of European and UK-funded research and development programmes. To date, Umit has published three edited books and over 100 papers in international journals and conferences.
Sergio Cavalieri
is Associate Professor at the Department of Industrial Engineering of the University of Bergamo. He graduated in 1994 in Management and Production Engineering; in 1998 he got his PhD title in Management Engineering at the University of Padua. In the past, his main research fields have been Modelling and Simulation of Manufacturing Systems, Application of Multi-agent Systems and Soft-computing Techniques for Operations and Supply-chain Management. Currently, he is coordinator of a national research project on management of after-sales processes in the consumable goods industry.
He has been participating in various research projects at national and international level. He has published about 40 papers in national and international journals and conference proceedings. He is currently coordinator of the IMS Network of Excellence Special Interest Group on Benchmarking of Production Scheduling Systems and a member of the IFAC-TC on Advanced Manufacturing Technology.
Gregor von Cieminski
, MEng, holds a degree in Manufacturing Sciences and Engineering from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. He is a research assistant at the Institute of Production Systems and Logistics (IFA), University of Hanover. As a member of the Production Management Research Group, his interests are in the fields of logistic modelling of production processes and supply-chain management. He has worked on national and international research projects and is a regular contributor to IFIP WG5.7 events at working group and special-interest group level. He coordinated the organization of the IFIP 2nd International Workshop on Performance Measurement in Hanover.
Gregor von Cieminski, Institute of Production System and Logistics, Schoenebecker Allee2, D-30823 Garbsen, Germany. Email: [email protected].