University of Twente Student Theses

Login

Flowserve : prestatiemeting in een industriële omgeving

Nijland, R.H.J. (2009) Flowserve : prestatiemeting in een industriële omgeving.

[img] PDF
506kB
Abstract:This thesis presents the results of a performance measurement project and the process of reaching these results. The project has been conducted at Flowserve Hengelo, at the departm ent of Order Fulfillment. In order to cope with the growth of the organization, the management team of Flowserve Hengelo has decided to introduce a new organization structure per January 1st, 2009. This new organization structure contains a new middle management layer that, together with the management team, represents the staff of Flowserve Hengelo. In order to better engage the people within the organization with Flowserve Hengelo, the management team has decided to draw up a new strategy together with middle management. The outcome of this initiative is a list of eight strategic goals. The staff regards these eight strategic goals as the strategy of Flowserve Hengelo . The goal of this research comes from the next step that needed to be taken, namely, to analyze how the departments could contribute to the realization of the strategy and which performance indicators the members of the departments could use to analyze the contributions. The goal has been reached through a cooperation of the researchers with the employees. This coopera tion is called action research. The parts of the action research can be summarized as follows: (1) Based on interviews with the staff members the strategy and the environment of Flowserve Hengelo has been described. (2) The next step was to define the key activities by which Order Fulfillment can contribute to fulfilling Flowserve Hengelo’s Strategy. (3) After that, the researcher organized a brainstorm session with the staff members of Order Fulfillment. The goal was to come up with as many suggestions for performance indicators as possible, for measuring the performance on the key activities. (4) Since the brainstorm session did not result in the number of suggestions the researcher had aimed for, the researcher decided to take individual interviews with the staff members of Order Fulfillment. These interviews did result in the number of desired suggestions for performance indicators. (5) The last step encompassed the selection of the performance indicators that the staff of Order Fulfillment will eventually be using. The selection process was based on criteria put forward by the staff and criteria that Neely, Mills, Platts, Richards, Gregory, Bourne and Kennerly (2000) have drawn from the literature. The most important criteria were that the performance indicators used existing data so that no new data needed to be generated and that the performance indicators could easily be revised in case the circumstances would change. The result of the action research is a performance measurement system consisting of ten performance indicators that the staff of Order Fulfillment can use to evaluate their performance regarding the strategic goals. Several conclusions can be drawn from this research. First, the list of eight strategic goals is rather an initiative to improve the effectiveness of the organization then to strategically position the organization. Second, the strategic goals are drawn from the vision and strategy of Flowserve Corporate. The researcher recommends viewing the strategic goals as an effort to improve effectiveness instead of a strategy. Also, the staff needs to formulate a strategy that does not converge with the strategy of Flowserve Corpora te but draws from the unique capabilities of Flowserve Hengelo. Central to this project was the creation of commitment among the staff members of Order Fulfillment. This commitment was pursued by opting for action research. The action research caused employees to be closely involved in the development of the performance indicators. However, they had little or no experience in the development of performance indicators. Initially, this caused some hurdles when trying to come up with suggestions for performance indicators. This process went smoother after the researcher introduced the Performance Measurement Record Sheet by Neely, Bourne, Mills, Platts and Richards (2002). If the management team of Flowserve Hengelo decides to execute the same project within a different department, the researcher advises to use the Performance Measurement Record Sheet again. Also, in case of a repetition of this project, the context of the current project need be considered. Several changes occurred during the implementation of this project, such as the introduction of a new organization structure, a new middle management layer and the staff meetings. It is likely that due to these change the employees involved in this project were more open to the implications of this project because their working environment was changing anyhow. In case this project would be repeated at a different time in a different department, the project may suffer from resistance of the people involved, as they rather hold on to the old situation. Secondly, the high level of education of the people involved in this project most likely contributed to the success of this project, even though they did not have experience with the design of performance indicators. Should this project be executed within a department with a low average level of education, it is possible the project will demand more time and effort to reach a comparable result. However, there is no proven evidence to support this statement and this demands further research.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Clients:
Flowserve Hengelo B.v.
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:85 business administration, organizational science
Programme:Business Administration MSc (60644)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/60123
Export this item as:BibTeX
EndNote
HTML Citation
Reference Manager

 

Repository Staff Only: item control page