Performance metrics : the levers for process management

Which performance measures should you use? The obvious answer is that it depends on what you want to achieve, which someone else should never define for you. After all, it is your organization, your department, or your process. But once you are clear about what you want to accomplish, how do you sort through a variety of possible metrics and decide which are best? Then, given the list of metrics you believe are useful or necessary, how do you define them in more detail to ensure that the right data are gathered at the appropriate frequency and that the resulting information gets to the right people so that they can make proper decisions? This book provides a clarifying perspective for those who know that metrics need to be developed but are unsure as to the steps to follow in developing and deploying them. It focuses on making sure that the metrics selected will guide people and processes in the direction the organization wants to go, and allow continual evaluation of success. Every highly effective organization is unique in some strategic way, and the metrics used should reflect these differences. Studying high performers can be useful from a learning standpoint, but simply adopting what someone else is doing is likely to take you off your track and put you on theirs. The concepts in this book will put you on the correct track and give you the tools to stay on it. This book is intended to help those involved in managing and conducting audits to ISO 9001:2008. It can be used as a guide to establishing a new audit program or for revitalizing one that has been operational for some time. It focuses on achieving an audit program that produces value-adding results for the organization. Arter, Cianfrani, and West, experts in both ISO 9001 and auditing, believe that the art and science of auditing quality management systems that have been designed and implemented following the process approach (the foundation of ISO 9001:2008) is more challenging and interesting than auditing discrete elements to determine whether documented procedures and records exist. Auditing a process-based QMS, or even small elements of such a system, requires auditors to understand and integrate into an audit all aspects of organizational activities, from high-level planning through ensuring that customers are satisfied. The role of auditing is evolving, and the skills and competence required to do it well also must evolve. The contents of this book will help auditors understand their role in the organization and discharge their auditing duties in a way that is challenging to them and contributes to the success of the organization.|This book is intended to help those involved in managing and conducting audits to ISO 9001:2008. It can be used as a guide to establishing a new audit program or for revitalizing one that has been operational for some time. It focuses on achieving an audit program that produces value-adding results for the organization. Arter, Cianfrani, and West, experts in both ISO 9001 and auditing, believe that the art and science of auditing quality management systems that have been designed and implemented following the process approach (the foundation of ISO 9001:2008) is more challenging and interesting than auditing discrete elements to determine whether documented procedures and records exist. Auditing a process-based QMS, or even small elements of such a system, requires auditors to understand and integrate into an audit all aspects of organizational activities, from high-level planning through ensuring that customers are satisfied. The role of auditing is evolving, and the skills and competence required to do it well also must evolve. The contents of this book will help auditors understand their role in the organization and discharge their auditing duties in a way that is challenging to them and contributes to the success of the organization.