The appropriate use of performance measurement in non‐production activity

Supply chain performance measures and metrics: a bibliometric study

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to review the existing literature on supply chain performance measures and metrics (PMMs). It provides a critical evaluation of 234 articles published in past 24 years.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper examines the studies published from 1991 to 2014 by adopting the bibliometric technique of citation and co-citation analysis.

Findings

The analysis of the results indicate that the number of articles on supply chain PMMs is increasing at its fastest pace in the past few years. Furthermore, the study identifies some of the most influential articles on performance measurement and metrics. Finally, it concludes that there has been a transition from traditional to more sophisticated performance measurement system.

Research limitations/implications

This study focuses only on supply chain performance measurement and metrics and excludes research on performance management and control. Thus, researchers may explore and extend this area of research.

Originality/value

To the knowledge of the authors, this is the first study to review the literature on supply chain PMMs by using citation and co-citation analysis. The study includes 234 articles over the time of 24 years (1991-2014).

Productivity of product design and engineering processes

Purpose

– Maintaining and improving productivity of product design and engineering processes has been a paramount challenge for design-driven companies, which are characterised a high degree of development of products and processes in order to meet particular customer requirements. Literature on this issue is fragmented and dispersed and a concise and systematic overview is lacking. Hence, it remains unclear, which methods are applicable for design-driven companies to improve the productivity of limitedly available engineering resources (a challenge companies and nations face currently). The purpose of this paper is to develop such a systematic overview.

Design/methodology/approach

– An unusual approach was utilised by combining the outcomes from a systematic literature review and the results of a Delphi study. From both research approaches complementary and overlapping methods for improving the productivity of product design and engineering processes could be drawn.

Findings

– The unique systematic overview presents 27 methods to increase the productivity, effectiveness and efficiency of product design and engineering processes of design-driven companies. Moreover, the study finds that methods for improving effectiveness are preferred over methods for improving efficiency and that limitations with regard to the availability of resources are often not considered.

Research limitations/implications

– During the development of the systematic overview, a lack of empirical evidence to assess the actual impact of productivity improvement methods was discovered. This shortcoming demonstrates the need for more conceptual and empirical work in this domain. More studies are needed to test and confirm the usefulness of the proposed methods.

Practical implications

– Nevertheless, design-driven companies, which struggle to increase the productivity of their product design and engineering processes, can systematically select improvement methods from the overview according to their impact on productivity, effectiveness and efficiency. However, companies should keep in mind, whether effectiveness of product design and engineering can really be increased without considering limitations in engineering resources.

Originality/value

– Therefore, the systematic overview provides a valuable map of the unexplored territory of productivity improvement methods for product design and engineering for both practitioners and researchers. For the latter ones, it creates directions for empirical investigations in order to explore and to compare methods for the improvement of productivity of product design and engineering processes.

Measuring Performance in New Product Development Projects: A Case Study in the Aerospace Industry

Implementing a performance measurement system (PMS) for research and development (R&D) is fundamental for supporting decision making and motivating researchers and engineers; however, this is a very challenging task, because effort levels are not measurable and success highly uncertain. Even if the subject has largely been debated in academic and practitioners literature so far, an acknowledged managerial approach is not available yet. This paper investigates the implementation and use of a PMS in new product development (NPD) projects, which represents a relatively unexplored issue in the R&D performance measurement debate. In particular, studying the case of a military aircraft development project, it provides a reference framework that integrates the major literature contributions’ findings and suggests a practical approach for the design and implementation of an effective PMS for NPD.