Customer Reviews

Vital Signs: Using Quality, Time, and Cost Performance Measurements to Chart Your Company's Future

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Just because this book was written to justify Arthur Anderson's best practices business doesn't mean it's not useful! Mike Hronec does a good job of making a case for developing appropriate performance measurements and sketches an outline for a robust process to get you there. Actually putting the plan into action is another story. Nonetheless, corporate controllers should read this book, if only to promote thinking about how effective their organizations' performance measures are in improving performance. Adam Lefton (adamleft@webspan.net)

This is a relatively basic book on using key performance metrics. The foundation of the approach is TQM, with a nice focus on how to use associated techniques to gather, analyze and manage the metrics. Some of the material is wrapped in "Quantum Performance" and its associated measurement matrix. The terminology and approach embodied in these are, at the basic level, a refactoring and tailoring of existing tools and techniques.

I like the way effective tools ranging from affinity diagrams to statistical process control charts are employed throughout the book. The realistic examples using these tools and techniques the tactical and strategic levels makes this book especially valuable to companies that have embraced TQM. However, each tool or technique can be effectively used in environments in which management is seeking a systematic way to measure the right things for competitive advantage.

Another valuable aspect of this book is the focus on processes, and how they apply to the big picture of performance measurement.

Overall, this is an easy-to-read book that is equally easy to understand and apply. Aside from a few unique perspectives and the focus on TQM and associated tools, the material is not groundbreaking. That is not to say that this book does not merit a place on your reading list if you are seeking a systematic performance measurement program, because the approach set forth is valid and will prove effective in the real world. I recommend reading this book as a starting point, then augmenting the knowledge gained with "Operational Performance Measurement: Increasing Total Productivity" (ISBN 1574440993) to get a complete picture before embarking on any performance measurement initiative.

I think this book has the potential to be a New York Times #1 Bestseller if it would only change the subject matter completely.