Production Evaluation

Abstract

Whatever the kind of organisation, be it making products or providing a service, it is bound to be concerned with its performance. After all, if an organisation, by definition, is where people work together to achieve some objective, it follows that some yardsticks are necessary by which we can judge whether the objective has been achieved. In general terms all organisations are input/output systems. Some would argue that service bodies, such as for example local government departments, do not have any output. While it may be more difficult to measure than, say, a company producing washing-machines, nevertheless there is an output. With the growth that is taking place in the non-manufacturing sector we can expect to see more attention given to performance measurements in organisations such as hospitals, universities, central and local government departments. This is not to suggest that the performance measurements in manufacturing industry do not require as much attention; wherever inputs are being converted into some kind of output, then some assessment of how well objectives have been reached is essential.