Monday 23 March 2009

Measurements and distance

Despite my previous Athletics Coaching experience, I'm not referring to Long jump measurements here.


Performance measures are good, applying stats to them is good, looking for trends is good. Why wouldn't you want to track key numbers?


However, I have recently seen examples where performance measures are being used to substitute for closeness to key operating areas and customers. Don't rely on performance measure to replace time spent understanding what is really going on. The Japanese call it going to the Gemba (see http://www.amazon.co.uk/Operations-and-Supply-Chain/lm/R3E73X9KNKKDJP/ref=cm_lm_byauthor_title_full).


Put in place and use Performance measures to ensure that you are achieving your strategy, but let them guide you to where you should be spending your valuable time.


Some of you may have seen our recent Spring Newsletter. In this issue we point to the article in the March edition of the Manufacturer that was based on Hugues Charrat's work at Cranfield, an MSc student that we worked with. His Thesis is on the resources page of our website ("Operating in the UK as a strategic Choice"), and the article can be found at http://snurl.com/e4ua5


This work builds on Greg Bacons Thesis from 2007 (see again our resources page and click on "Offshoring: An Industry insight into the benefits and challenges").

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