THE IMPACT OF PRIORITIES SETTING ON COMPANY PERFORMANCE. ANALYSIS OF THE INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION IN ROMANIA AND THE EU

To be successful or simply to survive the changing economic environment, companies need to know how to organize their work and how to set priorities that can be monitored, measured and completed in a timely manner. In the current competitive conditions, the adoption of effective manufacturing policies and the establishment of priority systems aimed at achieving high performance is the great challenge the managers of the manufacturing companies are facing. Studies revealed that in the production-oriented businesses the most common priorities refer to increasing product performance, customer satisfaction, and the investments in the development and innovation process, to cost reduction, resource planning systems, improvement of the supply chain, the training of employees and their involvement in the process of continuous improvement, to environmental policies. Companies in Romania as well as in the EU and throughout the world suffer major contractions because of a misalignment of decisions at all organizational levels. Until now the literature lacks an analysis of the effects the manufacturing policies established at company level have on performance and on the results of the activities undertaken. The present paper emphasizes the impact the alignment of priorities with company’s objective and strategy has on its performance, starting with a snapshot of the performance of the industrial sector in Romania before and after the installation of the economic crisis.