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1 Introduction
Globalisation and liberalisation create a need for having a manufacturing management system to estimate the performance of the manufacturing industry. [1] Amaratunga and Baldry (2002) define performance management (PM) as the use of performance measurement information to effect a positive change in the organizational culture, systems and processes, by helping to set agreed-upon performance goals, allocating and prioritizing resources, informing managers to either confirm or change current policy or programs direction to meet these goals and sharing the results of performance in pursuing these goals. PM both precedes and follows performance measurement. The effective conduct of PM is generally divided into two stages:
performance measurement; and
performance improvement.
Performance measurement is recognized as an important part of the manufacturing strategy literature. It is a process of quantifying actions, where measurement is the process of quantification and action correlates with performance. The definitions of three important terms in the context of performance measurement as given by [32] Neely et al. (1995) are the process of quantifying the efficiency and effectiveness of action. A performance measurement system can be examined at three different levels: the individual performance measures, the performance measurement system as an entity, the relationship between the performance measurement system and the environment in which it operates. The key to the evaluation of performance measurement in our view has to be based first and foremost on identifying the function of the performance measurement system; and this, again, depends largely on the organizational context and the organizational culture management intent and strategy. Thus, performance measurement sets the agenda for bringing the more relevant-, integrated-, balanced-, strategic- and improvement-oriented PM ([49] Tangen, 2004).
Performance improvement is the positive change which is brought about by process re-engineering, reflecting the concern of the customer. Process improvement identifies the redundant and missing performance measures, as well as identifies potential conflicts between performance measures and targets for each performance measure. Quality function deployment (QFD) has been used to improve the manufacturing process improvement. This technique converts the "voice of the customer" into design, engineering, manufacturing and production terms to ensure the product meets the needs of the customer. Therefore, it is an effective tool to integrate marketing strategy with product development process. The QFD procedure uses a series of...