Triad performance analysis

Businesses have begun to see the need to provide cost efficient, high quality products with an emphasis on reducing the time it takes to deliver these goods. To accomplish these goals, superior management decisions must be based upon information from multiple dimensions. Currently, the impact that a decision in the product or process development procedure has is not fully considered in cost, quality, and time, yet managers must be able to account for the results in these three domains. Unfortunately, there has been a deficiency in the use of multiple dimensions in the decision making process due to the lack of practice in this area.

Triad Performance Analysis is developed to meet this need. This activity-based methodology provides a complete breakdown of a design process. A superior process, containing only value added activities, is outlined that serves as a benchmark to improve the current process with in terms of cost, quality, and time. Using activity-based costing, quality measurements, and time studies, values for the cost, quality level, and time required for an activity can be tracked for the actual process and the superior process. Comparisons can be made, which leads to better focus for improvement programs so that the process can be modified to better mirror the superior process. These analyses lead to quantitative performance indicators that can be used to make decisions and then monitor the results.