I have witnessed more debates about KPIs and measures than any human really should. They normally settle into a few clear families. We shouldn’t measure -insert controversial topic- because: It’s too hard/expensive to measure We tried that before and it didn’t work It doesn’t have a causal link with the thing that we are interested [...]
A plain English guide to OEE
April 30, 2012 By 1 Comment
OEE stands for Overall Equipment Effectiveness. It is a very commonly used efficiency measure. What do we mean by efficiency? Put simply, it is “How much did we make, compared with how much we could have made.” OEE splits our efficiency down into three categories. The idea here is that we can get some understanding [...]
Razor burn and pseudoscience
September 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment
I tend to get sore skin if I shave with the wrong type of shaving gel. I’ve finally found a shaving gel that works (Nivea for Men, Sensitive, in case you are asking). What the hell has this got to do with KPIs? Well you can buy at least a dozen different brands of shaving [...]
Six KPI selection traps to avoid
September 6, 2011 By 3 Comments
Here are some really bad ways to choose the measures you use and report on: Interesting measures – People are driven by curiosity and that’s great, but don’t overdo it. I once worked with a call centre that had 128 KPIs, they just couldn’t bring themselves to leave any out. This is a symptom of [...]
Data Production – 10 Point Checklist
September 6, 2011 By 1 Comment
How good is your organisation a producing the data you need? (we aren’t talking about analysis, see this analysis checklist for that). Carefully answer these questions (you can use a 1-5 scale to improve the resolution of the checklist, where 1 is low/poor and 5 is high/strong). Does data arrive in a structured way, ready [...]
KPI Definition Checklist
August 25, 2011 By 13 Comments
It’s all too easy to end up with poorly defined KPIs. If this happens then there may be confusion about the purpose or definition of a KPI. Confusion leads to mistrust and disuse. Use this checklist to see if each of your KPIs and measures is well defined: KPI Name: Use a “what-it-say-is-what-it-is” type name, so that it doesn’t [...]
