Guest editorial

Citation

MacBryde, J. and Radnor, Z. (2006), "Guest editorial", International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Vol. 55 No. 3/4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijppm.2006.07955caa.001

Guest editorial

Dr Jillian MacBrydeSenior Lecturer within the Department of Design, Manufacture & Engineering Management at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK. She is also Deputy Director of the Centre for Strategic Manufacturing. Jill has been working in the area of process improvement and performance measurement for over ten years. She is currently leading a number of projects funded by the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The first of these projects “Closing the Gap” is concerned with how manufacturing SMEs can reposition themselves in the value chain. The second project she is involved with is part of the Design for the 21st Century Initiative. Here she leads a research cluster focused on Design Performance. She is also a co-investigator on a larger project investigating “the manage processes”. This multidisciplinary research project seeks to understand the manage processes in organisations and understand what makes them reliable. Finally Jill also leads a network focused on Manufacturing Futures. This is a network of UK academics and industrialists addressing the future of manufacturing academia and industry in the UK. E-mail: jillian.macbryde@strath.ac.uk

Dr Zoe Radnor Lecturer in Operations Management at Warwick Business School, Warwick, UK. Her career has included academic appointments at Bradford University School of Management, Manchester Business School and Leeds University Business School. Generally her research and publications are in the areas around performance measurement and management, improvement and innovation for both private and public sector. She is a Senior Associate with the Institute of Governance and Public Management at Warwick Business School and is currently Deputy Director of a three- year research project evaluating the Beacons Council Scheme. Her teaching, in the areas of operations management, operations strategy and performance management, is to all levels of students including undergraduate, MBA/MPA and Executive. In 2005 she won the Warwick University Award for Teaching Excellence. She is also involved in consultancy to a range of companies from SMEs, large blue-chip and public sector organisations in the areas of performance management, strategy and process improvement. Other professional activities include being a member of the British Academy of Management (BAM) Council and active involvement with the Economic and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Finally, Zoe is Academic Director for the Full Time MBA course at Warwick Business School and co-editor of the International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management. E-mail: zoe.radnor@wbs.ac.uk

Welcome to this special edition of the International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management. The focus of this issue is performance measurement and management related to design and manufacturing. A recent special issue edited by Zoe Radnor and Mike Kennerley pulled together a selection of papers from the Performance Measurement Association, PMA 2004 conference. However, the papers in that special issue had more of a bias towards the public sector and the service sector. So this issue attempts to re-address the balance and consider some of the performance challenges for organisations who are designing and manufacturing products. We hope you enjoy this issue as much as we have in reading and managing the papers that have been submitted to the journal within this theme.

We have come a long way from the days when performance measurement in manufacturing amounted to time and motion studies and piecework! Some of the biggest challenges for many manufacturing organisations today lie in managing the design activity and managing the supply chain. In the UK we have just see the publication of the Cox Report (2005) which played an important role in the The Chancellor’s Pre-budget Report (5 December, 2005). In the Chancellor’s report he notes that, “the UK’s economic success will depend on its ability to create new knowledge and translate it into innovative goods and services” (p. 36). Therefore, the first two papers of this special edition focus on the product development process.

The paper by James Moultrie, John Clarkson and David Probert from the Cambridge Institute for Manufacture and the Cambridge Design Centre presents a tool to evaluate design performance in SMEs. Whilst the paper demonstrates that the tool is firmly grounded in the literature, the tool itself presents a very useful approach to enable a design team to evaluate their design process in a workshop setting. The second paper from Fiona Lettice, Norman Roth and Ingo Forstenlechner also looks at performance in design – but this time focuses on the use of knowledge within the new product development process. This paper firstly presents a measurement cube built through a literature review of product development measures, and through four case studies the authors discuss the cubes value to companies, in terms of giving them a tool to improve the management of their new product development. The cube is further tested through a larger scale questionnaire.

The third paper looks at another big challenge for manufacturing organisations trying to find their place in the global marketplace – the issue of supply chain management. Craig Shepherd of the Institute of Work Psychology at Sheffield and Hannes Günter from ETH Zurich present a review of the contemporary literature on supply chain management and conclude that whilst there is a plethora of literature of supply chain management there is still very little research looking at the factors influencing the successful implementation of performance measurement systems for supply chains.

The next two papers also continue the theme of supply chain management – but both focus on the customer end of the “chain”. Nicola Saccani, Lucrezia Songini and Paolo Gaiardelli paper from the Universities of Bresca, Milan and Bergamo respectively, addresses an increasingly important issue for many manufacturing organisations – that of after sales service. As the boundaries between manufacture and service continue to blur, this paper looks at how companies are measuring their after sales service. They discuss the importance, in some industries, of having measurement systems that have a long-term focus and look across the product lifecycle, through its whole life in service. Peter Nyhuis and Markus Vogel from the University of Hannover also look at customer requirements. Their paper focuses on the importance placed on delivery reliability in the automotive industry. In their paper they present a new model-based method for assessing the logistic performance of single forging systems, based on the theory of logistic operating curves. This model is then deployed in a company supplying forged parts to the German automotive industry.

The next set of papers move into the manufacturing domain focusing on particular industries and productivity. Jairo Montoya-Torres, Centre Microelectronique de Provence paper presents an overview of performance management and productivity in the wafer fabrication industry in order to understand the impact of performance metrics. Surender Kumar’s paper from the TERI School of Advance Studies in New Delhi applies the total factor productivity (TFP) measure used to measure growth in industrial manufacturing in Indian states in order to examine pre- and post-reform changes in productivity and efficiency. Shahram Taj and Lismar Berro both from the University of Detroit Mercy present a practitioner paper considering the application of six-sigma and lean manufacturing for robot optimization in an auto-assembly plant. Through a detailed study the paper presents some best practice guidelines, which have been tested, which can be applied in order to improve productivity, efficiency and quality.

The final paper, by Timothy Stansfield and Clinton Longenecker, both from the University of Toledo is also concerned with manufacturing productivity but this time related to the workforce. The paper reports on a field study to test the effect of goal setting and feedback on workforce performance showing that both can significantly improve productivity as well as motivation. This paper reminds us of a recent story where a recent transaction, for a large software package, was conducted in US dollars even though the software was destined for a UK implementation. Over the time of the discussions and negotiations the price (in $US) remained constant but the cost (in £UK) varied significantly due to changes in the exchange rate – rising over 10 per cent over the period. The lesson is that issues over which you have no control can prove to be very frustrating. This is why employees often react to issues in a negative way particularly issues that have been imposed on them and they have little chance of influencing.

However, the comment above about the software package and the effects of currency variation can be tempered – and perhaps frustrations eased a little – by remembering the words of the Dalai Lama when he says … “If you have no control over a situation, there is no point worrying about it. If you do have control, there is no need to worry. Therefore, why worry!” The papers in this issue have attempted at giving a cross section of papers within the theme of design and manufacturing from the workforce to the supply chain, from manufacturing to design and from performance management to productivity, all which attempt, in some way, to create an understanding and level of control so at the worry can be focused! Enjoy!

Jillian MacBryde, Zoe Radnor