Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

It is widely known that most of the complex organizations implement performance measurement systems, in order to give true attention to results, responsibilities, and targets.

Indicators can be used within a wide-range, as discussed in Chap. 1. By reading any journal, it seems that these “magic” numbers influence the fate of the world: “European countries with deficit/GDP ratio lower than 3% can adopt Euro currency”; “country inflation is running at 2.7 %”; “the air quality index value is 6 (the elderly and children may be at risk. It is advised that these categories of people limit prolonged periods of time outdoors)” and so on.

One of the most critical aspects in operations management is “translating” a firm’s goals into performance indicators. The representation is a critical aspect for the process description. “To represent” means transferring the properties of an examined process into a set of indicators, trying to describe the processes’ most important aspects.

The previous chapters described indicators as helpful tools in collecting information and analysing the evolution of complex systems/processes.

The present chapter discusses how to establish and maintain a performance measurement system. This operation is at the “heart” of performance-based management processes. A performance measurement system, flowing from the organizational mission and the strategic planning process, provides the data that will be collected, analyzed, reported, and, ultimately, used to make sound business decisions.

The properties of an object, either directly or indirectly observable, may essentially be judged and described by three basic operations: measurements, evaluations and preferences . The aim of the present chapter is to propose a scheme to classify these three operations, and to provide a comparison within the indicators environment.