A Methodology for Determining Process and System-Level Manufacturing Performance Metrics

Given the low business safety margins of today's highly competitive marketplace and companies' inevitable efforts towards cutting cost and continuous improvement, the automotive industry, as well as other manufacturing arenas, are in a deep need for developing quantifiable definitions of their relevant performance improvement criteria. Manufacturing operations often represents the core of a company's business strategy. Hence, this paper describes an analytical and a simulation-based integrated methodology for determining Manufacturing Performance Metrics (MPMs) at both process and system levels. The proposed methodology focuses on determining MPMs associated with four key Industrial Engineering criteria: Productivity, Quality, Reliability, and Effectiveness (PQRE). Other criteria such as Cost and Safety, which are commonly used in conjunction with the PQRE criteria for systems design and improvement, are not the focus of this paper. Determining PQRE metrics will provide engineers and managers of manufacturing systems with a set of practical control sensors and scoreboard that aid their efforts to assess the performance of a system's current state, evaluate future design proposals, and direct the organization's continuous improvement programs.