ABSTRACT
Installing a measurement regime does not, of course, cause such investigation. Stakeholders in our process will start to point out if we are failing, whether or not we are actually measuring our own performance. Measurement does, though, enable us to identify where things are going wrong and to take action before the customers start to complain. There are, however, a number of indicators where the desirable direction is downwards. In such cases, the lower the measurement, the happier we are. Although this does not fit the model of equating the measurement to an indicator of performance, it is still valid and is widely used. Targets for up-stream measurements that do not directly cover a customer requirement are more difficult to set. By definition there is no customer requirement for the measurement and it would be harder to use competitive information for subsidiary measurements than for the output of the whole process.
