PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Project management

Project management

Introduction

Performance evaluation is an important activity for the survival and growth of any firm. As the old adage goes: “you can't improve what you can't measure”. Given the magnitude of the organizational changes, there is a need for performance measures to gauge progress towards organizational goals, to provide feedback on efforts for continuing improvement, and to guide the transformation through successive stages (Chan, 2006). Performance measurement is related to strategic intent, and the broad set of metrics used by managers to monitor and guide an organization within acceptable and desirable parameters (Morgan, 2004). Organizations may need to carry out performance measurement for various kinds of reasons: identifying success, identifying whether they are meeting customer requirements, helping them understand their processes, identifying where problems bottlenecks, waste, etc., exist and where improvement are necessary, ensuring decisions are based on fact, not on supposition, emotion or intuition; and showing if improvement planned, actually happened (Parker, 2000). Management gurus have long argued that a key to continuous improvement is to measure, measure and measure (Lapiede, 2000). Companies that have won the Baldridge Award or similar state awards have extensive measurement systems. Over a five year period ending in 1998, the winners of Baldridge Award and similar awards did two to three times better than comparable companies in terms of growth in sales and operating income (www.balancedscorecard.org). Performance measures have two main effects. First of all, they can be used as a good description for the as is situation. Secondly, they can be used to set performance goals (Myer et al., 2000). The firm must have comprehensive set of measures to assess progress towards achieving company wide goals, improving core business processes and aligning the firm with the needs of the market (Lockamy et al., 2000). Measures and metrics are needed to test and reveal the viability of strategies without which a clear direction for improvement and realization of goals would be highly difficult (Gunasekaran et al., 2001). Organizations need to ensure achievement of their goals and objectives, therefore, purpose of performance measurement is to evaluate, control and improve operation processes (Ghalayini and Noble, 1996).

Supply chain managemet and its performance measurement

Supply chain management (SCM) is the practice of co-coordinating the flow of goods, services, information and finances as they move from raw material to wholesaler to retailer to consumer (Russell, 2001). It is more than a simple tool to evaluate and optimize a supply chain; it is a complex, structured business relationship model. It takes into consideration all aspects of the events required to produce your company's product in the most efficient and cost effective manner possible (Quiett, 2002). One of the most significant paradigm shifts of modern business management is that individual businesses no longer compete as solely autonomous entities, but rather as supply chains (Lambert and Cooper, 2000). SCM is being heralded as a value driver because it has such wide ranging effect on business success or failure (Farris II and Hutchison, ...