Performance measurement systems in manufacturing: State-of-the-art and future trends

Several research activities and industrial projects have been undertaken in the area of performance measurement systems. The main reason for this is acknowledgement by practitioners and researchers that to improve it is first necessary to understand the present position and circumstances. The rising strategies, policies and methodologies of the last two decades, even from distant fields, such as Business Process Re-engineering, Strategic Benchmarking, Total Quality Management, Balanced Scorecard, Six Sigma, Total Productive Maintenance, have strongly highlighted the need, before acting, to assess the performance of the processes to be controlled, whichever the level they belong to, whether at supply chain or extended enterprise stage or, at the other extreme, at single production or simple machine level. Indeed, what is often missing in the industrial practice is a sound alignment among the performance metrics, designed and adopted at the different levels of the decision making processes of a manufacturing company. This gap is mainly owing to the fact that a consistent and effective Performance Measurement System (PMS) requires, in its development, the consistent contribution of different expertise, encompassing the complex, multifaceted and interdisciplinary nature of an industrial company. This is also what the Special Interest Group on Benchmarking and Performance Measurement, established within the IMS-NoE, has experienced during its activities and discussed in its meetings and workshops. Having started mainly with the purpose to focus on a particularly important, yet specific issue, how to evaluate the level of quality and effectiveness of production schedules which is quite compelling in the scheduling industrial and research community, the Group progressively extended its scope, gathering also contributions from experts working in the area of strategic management and supply chain management. This paper provides a synthesis of the various contributions gathered from SIG4 members, assessing in particular the state-of-the-art of PMS in the industrial environment, understanding the current needs from industry and the main gaps, and providing a vision on future challenges and research directions.