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A review of: “Performance Management: A Business

Process Benchmarking Approach” Edited by Asbjorn
Rolstadas Chapman & Hall, 1995, 399 pp., ISBN 0 412
60560 0, $49.95 (Hardback)
a
James T. Luxhoj
a
Department of Industrial Engineering , Rutgers University , Piscataway, NJ, 08855-0909,
USA
Published online: 31 May 2007.

To cite this article: James T. Luxhoj (1996) A review of: “Performance Management: A Business Process Benchmarking
Approach” Edited by Asbjorn Rolstadas Chapman & Hall, 1995, 399 pp., ISBN 0 412 60560 0, $49.95 (Hardback), IIE
Transactions, 28:6, 524-526, DOI: 10.1080/07408179608966302

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07408179608966302

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computer during a simulation. The discussion describes
principles of operation, technical specifications, limita-
tions, and prices. Input devices discussed include 3D
position sensors, trackballs, 3D probes, and sensing
gloves. Output devices discussed include stereo viewing
devices and 3D sound generators. Chapter 3 provides a
closely related discussion of devices providing touch and
force feedback. These devices include tactile displays,
force-feedback arms, joysticks, hand masters, arm mas-
ters, and modified sensing gloves. The discussion in these
two chapters provides a useful overview of commercially
available input and output devices, but would benefit from
a more complete treatment of human factors issues
associated with their use. Much relevant literature on
the topics of psycho-motor control, psycho-acoustics,
psycho-physics, and human-computer interaction is not
Downloaded by [University of Sussex Library] at 16:32 15 January 2015
cited. This shortcoming may leave the naive reader with
the impression that such literature does not exist.
Chapter 4 discussed computer architectures used in
Virtual Reality applications, many of which are commer-
cially available. The discussed platforms include personal
computers. work stations, supercomputers, and distribu-
ted environments. The focus is primarily on evaluating
the graphics performance of the various systems. Chapter
5 discusses the means of modeling the virtual world
within the simulation. The main topics include geometric
modeling, kinematic modeling, physical modeling, object
behavior, and model segmentation. Chapter 6 focuses on
programming tools and techniques for developing Virtual
Reality simulations. These include the VR Editor, the
Resident Modeler, event scheduling, real-time distributed
simulation, graphical programming, and non-commercial
VR toolkits. These last three chapters provide a nice
overview of how programming tools, modeling methods,
and computer architectures interactively influence simu-
lation fidelity and cost. They provide a tutorial overview
of what is available, and should be helpful to students and
researchers considering getting involved in Virtual Rea-
lity.
Chapter 7 addresses human factors issues in Virtual
Reality, including evaluation methodologies, simulation
Performance Management: A Business Process Benchmarking Approach
Edited by Asbjern Rolstadds
Chapman & Hall, 1995, 399 pp., ISBN 0 412 60560 0, $49.95 (Hardback)
The intent of this book, as noted in the preface, is to
present an overview of numerous performance evaluation,
measurement, and improvement techniques. The editor
states that the book is 'aimed at an audience of business
and technology oriented personnel at middle and higher
management levels in manufacturing industry. At the
Book reviews
sickness, and social impacts. Some interesting findings
are reported on, and the authors correctly emphasize the
importance of 'good' human factors as an uItimate de-
terminant of the quality of a developed simulation. On the
other hand, the discussion is uneven, as some details are
given on a small, apparently arbitrarily selected, set of
subtopics, and most issues are treated shallowly at best.
Illustrating this issue, the authors discuss force and tactile
feedback at the level of mechano-receptors, but make no
such effort for vision or hearing. As another example, the
authors state humans have an audible range of hearing
from 20 to 20000 Hz, without recognizing that sensitivity
changes greatly across the spectrum. No designer would
use a tone at 50 or 12 000 Hz. Because of such problems,
the chapter fails as even a tutorial overview to non-
experts in human factors.
Chapter 8 briefly summarizes applications of Virtual
Reality in (1) medicine and rehabilitation, (2) education,
arts, and entertainment, (3) the military and aerospace,
and (4) business, robotics, and manufacturing. The appli-
cations are interesting, to say the least, and several
entertainment applications were clearly commercial suc-
cesses. The book then concludes with Chapter 9, which
presents the authors' view of future developments in
Virtual Reality. Noted developments include large-
volume-tracking sensing methods, better visual displays
(head-mounted, or others), new haptic displays (boots,
suits, etc.), neural interfaces (EEG monitors), image
gloves, voice control, portable computers, and advances
in programming and modeling tools.
In summary, the authors attain their goal of providing
substantial technical details regarding both the hardware
and software used in Virtual Reality. The book should be
useful to both professionals from outside areas desiring an
overview of the area and students in engineering or
science. Outside professionals reading this book are likely
to see many areas of needed research.
Reviewed by Mark Lehto, Associate Professor, School of
Industrial Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette,
IN 47907-1287, USA
same time it is suitable as a textbook for business and
engineering schools and colleges'. There are seven con-
tributors to the book and all are affiliated with the
Norwegian Institute of Technology, at the University of
Trondheim in Norway. The book is reviewed according to
whether the editor's stated objectives are met.
 Book reviews
The book is divided into five main parts and includes a
total of 17 chapters. Part 1, 'Productivity and competi-
tiveness: an introduction to performance', includes four
chapters. The first chapter presents a short summary of
the evolution of productivity methods and offers various
definitions of productivity. Total and partial productivity
indices are briefly discussed. A new productivity para-
digm has emerged that is much broader in scope than the
traditional 'efficiency'-focused productivity paradigm.
The difference between an innovation strategy and' a
Continuous Improvement (CI) approach is discussed.
Although the chapter is short (15 pages), it does present
a 'snapshot' of the evolution of the productivity concept
and the reasons motivating a new productivity paradigm.
However, when viewed as a potential textbook, more
examples of calculations of total and partial productivity
Downloaded by [University of Sussex Library] at 16:32 15 January 2015
indices are required. The second chapter focuses mainly
on the research of Michael Porter (1980, 1985, 1990) that
examines company strategies to create competitive ad-
vantage, using the value chain to diagnose company
competitiveness, and issues related to international com-
petitiveness. The chapter presents a concise summary of
Porter's books and explains topics such as cost leader-
ship, differentiation, and focusing. The Porter 'diamond'
that may be used to model national competitiveness is
reviewed and the concept of the 'value chain' is summar-
ized. The chapter also includes a summary of the MIT
study 'Made in America' that highlights major reasons for
a productivity decline in the U.S; The chapter ends with a
brief presentation of the TOPP program, a productivity
improvement research program intended to increase the
competitiveness of Norwegian mechanical and electro-
mechanical industries. The chapter is well organized in
that it presents a succinct summary of Porter's conceptual
models and then highlights problems in national competi-
tiveness by using examples from U.S. and Norwegian
research studies; However, if the chapter is to be mean-
ingfully used for instruction, there should be some dis-
cussion questions included at the end of the chapter. The
third chapter continues to discuss the issue of competi-
tiveness, but focuses more on marketing and methods of
creating customer value. The last chapter in this section
builds on the previous material to highlight the need for
new methods of performance management and continues
to illustrate the deficiencies of traditional cost measure-
ment systems. Deming's work in quality management is
briefly presented as an example of a new approach to
break away from traditional management thinking. The
chapter could include some additional discussion of other
quality gurus, such as Juran and Crosby, for complete-
ness, but this overview is presented in Chapter 12. Also,
Activity Based Costing is presented but thorough exam-
ples are not included. The importance of developing a
performance measurement systkm is stated, but the ele-
ments of such a system are not fully developed in this
chapter.
Part 2, 'Performance planning', contains two chapters.
The first chapter examines the characteristics of the
traditional planning hierarchy. Defiaitions of vision, mis-
sion, guiding principles (values and beliefs), and super-
ordinate goals are presented. Although strategic planning
is briefly presented, the chapter would benefit from the
inclusion of methods and case studies. The second chapter
introduces a business planning model that is based on the
Quality Function Deployment (QFD) methodology. The
QFD approach is extended to include both strategic and
stakeholders requirements. An example is included at the
end of the chapter to illustrate the use of the modified
QFD approach for determining performance requirements
of production management for a company. Although the
example is useful, the case is not fully developed (only
three pages).
Three chapters are contained in Part 3, 'Performance
review'. These chapters address modeling in manufactur-
ing enterprises, performance measurement, and perfor-
mance evaluation. Such topics as product and process
modeling, rapid prototyping, concurrent engineering, va-
lue chains, organizational design, information modeling,
'
and virtual manufacturing are overviewed. In-depth tech-
nical discussions are not included, but the material is easy
to read and descriptive. The elements of a performance
measurement system are defined, and alternative types of
metrics are described. Examples are lacking, but the
material includes a systematic approach to developing a
performance measurement system. The importance of a
performance self-audit is argued, and although some
TOPP procedures are alluded to for conducting such an
audit, a case example is not included.
Part 4, 'Performance improvement', reviews issues and
topics associated with performance improvement. The
four chapters overview improvement strategies such as ,
Business Process Reengineering (BPR), Continuous Im-
provement (CI), benchmarking, Total Quality Manage-
ment (TQM),Statistical Process Control (SPC), I S 0
9000, Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), etc. The
material on benchmarking is especially informative. The
last chapter in this section includes descriptions of tools
for continuous improvement. Seven 'new' tools are de-
scribed briefly, including the relations diagram, the KJ
method for developing affinity diagrams, the systematic
or 'means-goals' diagram, the matrix diagram, the matrix
data analysis method, the Process Decision Program
Chart, and the arrow diagram. However, a review of these
methods suggests that their novelty is questionable, and
technical discussions with meaningful examples are not
provided.
Part 5, 'Performance influencing factors', concludes
the book with four chapters that focus on identifying
performance influencing factors. Management concepts,
such as Just-in-Time (JIT), Time-Based Management
(TBM),Total Quality Management (TQM), and Activ-
ity-Based Management (ABM) are briefly summarized.

Some production management paradigms, such as the
optimization, information processing, and cybernetic
paradigms, are distinguished. Techniques for project
management and cost estimating are also included in this
section, which ends with a discussion of the purchasing
function and the relationship of supplier/buyer coopera-
tion to strategic competitiveness.
Overall, this book does examine the important problem
of developing methods of performance management. The
chapters in the book address the general issues and well-
recognized challenges of quality, cost, and service that
confront modem businesses. The book presents a coherent
overview of modem management ideas that serves as an
introduction to middle management personnel in busi-
ness. However, the book does not meet the editor's
secondary purpose of being suitable as an academic text-
Downloaded by [University of Sussex Library] at 16:32 15 January 2015
book, because technical examples and in-depth discus-
Project Management - Engineering, Technology, and Implementation
Avraham Shtub, Jonathan F. Bard and Shlomo Globerson
Prentice Hall, Inc., 1995, 634 pp., ISBN 0- 13-556458-1
Even though there exist a large number of books in the
field of project management, it is rare to come across a
book that successfully covers two hard-to-link fields:
theory and practice. This book aims at bridging the gap
between these two fields and can be ranked among the
quite successful ones available thus far. Theoretical
aspects, as well as practical issues in project manage-
ment, are covered in a structured fashion, guiding the
reader through these vast areas step by step. Tools of the
trade are presented in a concise and integrated manner.
The authors carefully avoid the 'this is what we know so
you should know' approach found in some project sche-
duling books, while not seriously missing what every
project manager should know. Overall, the book success-
fully presents a comprehensive view of project manage-
ment and necessary details in each subset area.
The book starts with an overview of project manage-
ment, including the characteristics of projects, the role of
a project manager, components, concepts, and terminol-
ogy. The following chapters are structured along func-
tional lines, and at the end of each chapter a series of case
studies based on a waste disposal facility is provided.
Quick reviews of the necessary theories are provided at
the ends of the related chapters. Chapter 2 covers the
engineering economic analysis, including the utility the-
ory. Techniques for screening and selecting projects are
addressed in Chapter 3, such as checklists, benefit-cost
analysis, risk management, and decision trees. An intro-
duction of Bayes's theorem is appended. In Chapter 4,
multi-objective decision making models are provided.
Book reviews
sions are not included. Also, some of the 17 chapters are
very short and the material could very easily be integrated
into other existing chapters. Although the subtitle refers
to 'business processes', the book could benefit from the
inclusion of additional, in-depth case studies from varied
industries. The book ends abruptly and needs a 'conclu-
sions' section or should, at least, identify some opportu-
nities for future research in the area of performance
management. Nevertheless, this book could serve as a
valuable introductory reference text for business profes-
sionals interested in modem approaches to performance
planning, measurement, and improvement.
Reviewed by James T. Luxhoj, Department of Industrial
Engineering, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08855-
0909, USA
Multi-Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT) and Analytic
Hierarchy Process (AHP) are introduced, the relative
advantages of each being compared through a case study
in the appendix. The notions of the organizational break-
down structure and the work breakdown structure are
introduced in Chapter 5. The definitions and roles of
these two cornerstones for project management are ex-
plained and a discussion of how to combine the two is
provided.
Configuration management, the process by which the
technological configuration of projects is developed and
maintained, is discussed in Chapter 6. The concept of
Total Quality Management (TQM)is also presented,
together with relationship and integration issues. Chapter
7 discusses the network-based analysis, focusing on the
famous Gantt charts, CPM, and PERT networks. Project
budgeting, in Chapter 8, covers the issues of preparation
and management of the budget. In Chapter 9, resource
leveling and allocation techniques are introduced. Heur-
istics and mathematical models for allocating resources to
project activities are explained.
The concept of life-cycle costing applied to project
management is briefly introduced in Chapter 10, and
techniques for measuring and controlling the progress of
a project follow. In Chapter 12, the book provides an
overview and related management techniques regarding
R&D projects. In the remaining two chapters, software-
support and project-termination processes are introduced.
Finally, a compact user manual of the software, Super-
project, provided with the book, is appended.