Throughout the last two decades a number of industries, primarily manufacturing,
have introduced new methods and techniques to shift traditional paradigms in order to
improve their performance. This has led to the creation of new philosophies such as
concurrent engineering/construction, lean production/construction and many others
such as JIT, TQM, TPM etc. The main driver behind those philosophies is to optimise
an organisation’s performance both internally and externally within its respective
marketplace. Inevitably, this has led to the ‘rethinking’ of performance management
systems through effective performance measurement. Bititci et al. (1997) explain the
distinction between performance management and measurement in that the first “… is
seen as a closed loop control system which deploys policy and strategy, and obtains
feedback from various levels in order to manage the performance of the system”