Proposed analysis of performance measurement for a production system

Hitherto, very few performance measures have been constructed for selecting the right production system. Before a new, advanced manufacturing system (e.g. Just In Time and Flexible Manufacturing System) is implemented in a company, it is of paramount importance that extensive analysis should be done to ensure that the ladder is lying against the right wall. Currently, the selection of a production system is mostly centred on perceptions or mere judgments from experience. Hence, a quantitative form of selection would be more convincing, as it will show and compare the degree of advantage between each manufacturing system in numbers and percentages. This paper discusses the authors’ attempt to formulate a performance measure that could quantitatively analyse and select the best production system for a company. A questionnaire survey has been carried out in a multinational company in Johore, Malaysia and the results are used to formulate the performance measure. Reliability tests on the instrument and correlation tests on the six identified manufacturing outputs were performed. Tests of significance were also done on the outputs used.