ARTICLE DESCRIPTION: Only those areas which are important to the business need to be measured; that is the factors critical for the success of the business. It is usually the customer or the market that defines these. How successful the company is in those areas is judged by how well it performs in comparison to the competition. Consider quality. Whilst this may be of prime importance to the customer there may be no value in making an improvement if the product's reliability is already ahead of the competition. To make matters worse, making a step change improvement in quality could in consequence defer a price reduction in the product and it is in on that factor the business might be weak.

MORE INFO: Letter: Performance Measurement Systems Only those areas which are important to the business need to be measured; that is the factors critical for the success of the business. It is usually the customer or the market that defines these. How successful the company is in those areas is judged by how well it performs in comparison to the competition. Consider quality. Whilst this may be of prime importance to the customer there may be no value in making an improvement if the product's reliability is already ahead of the competition. To make matters worse, making a step change improvement in quality could in consequence defer a price reduction in the product and it is in on that factor the business might be weak. Developing measures only serves to draw attention. Therefore, it makes sense to introduce a programme of measures for those factors the business is wanting to improve upon. To do otherwise is folly and might produce an unrewarding end result. Regards Colin Richmond Lucas Varity

PUBLISHER: Institute of Operations Management

Page number: 6 Words: approx. 150

Vol 25 - No 07 - September 1999

The article can be downloaded in full from the publisher's site i.e. the Institute of Operations Management.

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Business Performance Improvement