The book is written by a group of authors united by application of the same methodology and experience of cooperation for a long time. The contents of the book cover:

1. Methods of generation of noncircular gears by enveloping methods that are similar to those applied for generation of circular gears. However, the motions of the generating tools (rack cutter, shaper, or hob) are nonlinear and must be computerized.

2. Design of noncircular gears to be applied for variation of output speed and generation of functions. Such a design requires determination of mating centrodes that roll over each other.

3. Detailed procedure of design of elliptical gears with spur and helical teeth, oval gears, lobes, eccentric involute gears, and twisted gears (applied for extension of the interval of function generation).

4. Tandem design of planar linkages coupled with noncircular gears for a broader variation range of the output speed.

The authors hope that this book will allow extension of application and design of noncircular gear drives in mechanisms and industry.

Noncircular gears (NCG) have been considered a curiosity and a product of niche applications for a long time because of their design and manufacture complexity. However, thanks to the availability of powerful computers and sophisticated CNC machine tools, the design and manufacturing of NCG became more feasible and their potential in many fields can be more easily exploited.

NCG are used to improve the function, versatility, and simplicity of many mechanical processes. For instance, they allow speed matching on assembly lines, linear motion with quick return, and stop-and-dwell motion. Very recent publications in highly respected scientific journals show that the interest in NCG is still very strong, for both the theoretical and manufacturing challenges involved, especially in today's high-performance automatic machines.

In this context, this book on NCG is very welcome. It covers all the basic issues of NCG and shows how to solve most of the key problems in NCG design and manufacturing. It clearly presents the foundations of this topic, very useful to the beginner, as well as new and advanced concepts of great importance to both scientists involved in research issues and skillful designers facing NCG sizing and manufacturing. In particular, the book represents the most comprehensive and authoritative treatise on NCG available today for scientists and designers. When complemented with a recently published book, Gear Geometry and Applied Theory (2nd ed.) by F. L. Litvin and A. Fuentes (Cambridge University Press, 2004), which provides the fundamentals of all types of gears, the whole field of the theory and applications of gears is covered.

Introduction: government, targets and measurement

The last twenty years have seen the use of performance measurement and performance management mushroom in government departments and agencies in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. A review of the use of performance measurement in various countries can be found in Public Management Reform: A Comparative Analysis, by Pollitt and Bouckaert (2004). Performance measurement is not a new feature of public administration, but it has become much more prominent in the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand and some other countries during the last two decades. A positive review of these developments in the United Kingdom was produced by the government's Comptroller and Auditor General in 2001 (National Audit Office, 2001). A rather more critical review can be found in the report produced by the Public Administration Select Committee in 2003 following its extensive discussions (Public Administration Select Committee, 2003).

There are many different aspects of the public sector that could be measured. These include issues of productivity, traditionally the domain of economists, which was the major concern of the Atkinson Review (Office of National Statistics, 2005), set up by the National Statistician “to advance methodologies for the measurement of government output, productivity and associated price indices in the context of the National Accounts …”.

Introduction

Performance is not an easy subject. There is a clear need to study and rethink what is meant by the performance of the firm and how to measure it. Performance has become the mantra of recent years. Many firms claim to be running for performance and seek to measure their performance, improve performance and compensate their people for performance. Yet, at the same time, there is widespread dissatisfaction with most performance measurement systems. Many firms, perhaps the majority, feel that they have not got it right. A 1995 article in Chief Financial Officer begins: “According to a recent survey, 80 percent of large American companies want to change their performance measurement systems …” The high level of dissatisfaction is sometimes attributed to the dearth of non-financial predictors of financial performance: “Yesterday's accounting results say nothing about the factors that actually help grow market share and profits – things like customer service innovation, R&D effectiveness, the percent of first-time quality, and employee development” (Birchard, 1995). At the same time, controllers cite the burdens imposed by “newfangled performance measures” – read non-financial measures – as a key source of burnout, according to another article in Chief Financial Officer (Goff, 1995). Reports such as these, though anecdotal, suggest that executives are seeking measures that their controllers have so far been reluctant to deliver, leading to frustration on both sides.

Part III of this book explored some of the generic practicalities and challenges of performance measurement. Since the first edition of this book was published there has been an explosion of interest in the measurement of performance in public services, and so it is to this topic that we now turn our attention. This part consists of four chapters, three of which reflect on the challenges of measurement in different public service settings – education, the police force and health. The fourth contribution explores issues of perversity in public service performance measurement.

The opening chapter, by Andrew Brown, explores performance management in English primary schools. Brown identifies five reasons why performance might be measured: (i) measuring for the purposes of focusing attention; (ii) measuring to improve pupils' academic progress; (iii) measuring for professional development purposes; (iv) measuring for strategy implementation purposes; and (v) measuring to implement performance-related pay. Using a combination of desk and field reasearch he explores the theoretical and practical challenges of each of the reasons for measurement, pointing out the inherent tensions and conflicts between them. Brown's chapter is important because it elucidates many of the reasons why performance measurement and management are so problematic in the English education system.

The second contribution, from Paul Collier, explores a different public service regime: the police force. Collier begins by tracing the evolution of performance measurement in the police.

Introduction

This chapter explores performance measurement from an operations perspective. Members of the operations management community have been interested in performance measurement – at both the strategic and the tactical level – for decades. Wickham Skinner, widely credited with the development of the operations strategy framework, for example, observed in 1974:

Skinner's early work on operations (initially manufacturing) strategy influenced a generation of researchers, all of whom subsequently explored the question of how to align operations policies with operations objectives (see, for example, Hayes and Wheelwright, 1984; Hayes, Wheelwright and Clark, 1988; Hill, 1985; Mills, Platts and Gregory, 1995; Platts and Gregory, 1990; Slack and Lewis, 2001).

It was during this phase of exploration that the operations management community's interest in performance measurement was probably at its peak, with numerous authors asking how organizational performance measurement systems could be aligned with operations strategies (for a comprehensive review of these works, see Neely, Gregory and Platts, 1995).

Introduction

In this chapter the authors address the questions of what performance is and how to create it. The authors develop a series of nine propositions that, taken together, provide an answer to these questions.

After a brief overview of the reasons that led to these questions, and a review of the relevant literature that shows the diversity of meanings of “performance”, the authors develop step by step the process that leads to performance, showing it to be a social construct that results from the identification and the sharing of a causal model. That observation leads to the conclusion that performance is meaningful only within a decision-making context. The concept of performance is, therefore, specific to a given set of decision makers. Creating alignment between decision makers both inside and outside the firm is a prerequisite for performance to occur.

In the last sections of the contribution, the authors show the impact of responsibility assignment and of measurement on the operational definition of performance. All in all, the nine propositions form the basis on which performance can be defined, identified, measured and managed.

Performance

The word “performance” is widely used in all fields of management. In the management control area, terms such as “performance management” (Euske, Lebas and McNair, 1993), “measurement”, “evaluation” (e.g. Bruns, 1992) and “appraisal” are used. Despite the frequency of use of the word, its precise meaning is rarely explicitly defined by authors, even when the main focus of the article or book is performance (e.g. Neely, Gregory and Platts, 1995; Corvellec, 1994).

Introduction: the pressure to measure

It is a heady time for marketing performance measurement. In the past several years the pressure to measure the performance of marketing better has become relentless from both corporate managers and the academics and consultants who work with them. In the United Kingdom several marketing trade organizations recently came together to sponsor the Marketing Metrics project (Ambler, 2003), and the Chartered Institute of Marketing issued its own substantial report on marketing effectiveness (Chartered Institute of Marketing, 2001). In the United States the influential Marketing Science Institute declared marketing metrics a key research priority in four consecutive biennial reports (Marketing Science Institute, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004), supported by several well-attended joint conferences of academics and practitioners (Debruyne and Hubbard, 2000; Bahadir and Tuli, 2002; Bruno, Parthasarathi and Singh, 2005) and a special section of the October 2004 issue of the Journal of Marketing (Lehmann, 2004). The American Marketing Association followed up with a major study among its members on marketing accountability (American Marketing Association, 2005). Other US-based organizations, such as the Marketing Leadership Council (Marketing Leadership Council, 2001, 2002, 2003) and the CMO (chief marketing officer) Council (CMO Council, 2004), have also issued their own reports on improving performance measurement.

This rush of interest has been driven by a number of factors.

The second part of the book explores some of the frameworks and methodologies associated with performance measurement. While there is considerable interest in the balanced scorecard, there are, of course, numerous other measurement frameworks and methodologies, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.

The first contribution in this part, from Andy Neely, Mike Kennerley and Chris Adams, reviews some of these other measurement frameworks and then proposes an alternative framework: the performance prism. Neely, Kennerley and Adams argue that the strength of the performance prism lies in the fact that it unifies existing measurement frameworks and builds upon their individual strengths. The balanced scorecard, for example, is strong in that it argues for a balanced set of measures, but weak in that it omits some extremely important stakeholder perspectives – i.e. those of employees and suppliers. Similarly, activity-based costing is strong in that it explicitly recognizes the importance of activities and processes, but weak in that it does not link these processes back to strategies or stakeholders. The performance prism addresses these, and other issues, by providing an integrated framework with which to view organizational performance.

The second contribution explores the concepts of “beyond budgeting” and the adaptive organization. In recent years there has been significant interest in beyond budgeting, a notion promulgated by Jeremy Hope and Robin Fraser.

Introduction

When considering measurement, the first practical questions faced by managers should be: what is it that requires measurement, and what is measurement? Answering these two questions at something more than a superficial level can take managers a long way towards the design and development of a measurements system suited to their needs.

One surprising issue often overlooked when measuring systems are designed concerns the nature and purpose of the measurement. Quite often this is brutally exposed by the chief executive if, when presented with new results for the first time, he or she says “So what?”. A considerable benchmarking industry has grown up around the subject of performance measurement. Performance measurement assumes that the results it provides and the benchmarking activities that accompany it are useful in themselves. The motivation of the chief executive in the statement above is to question value – that is, how valuable this performance is to the company. Would it make a difference to any of his/her stakeholders or shareholders if the performance of certain factors were to increase by 10 per cent or if they were to decline by 10 per cent? The distinction between value and performance is critical, and, in general, performance measurement should be seen only as the first step on the way to providing useful value-based output. Measuring value adds some particular difficulties, especially with the definition of value, and involves the axiology of the individual.

Introduction

One ostensible objective of research on performance measurement is to determine the characteristics of measurement systems that lead to high performance. To this end, descriptive theories of performance measurement hypothesize relationships between work contexts, the design of measurement systems, the aptitudes and behaviour of workers, and the outcomes that result from the work. Normative theories specify principles of design for measurement systems intended to produce desirable outcomes.

Usually, normative theories do not specifically assert that high performance results only from performance measurement systems constructed in accord with theory. Nonetheless, high performance achieved via means other than performance measurement should surely operate in a way that is consistent with the mechanisms inherent in these performance measurement theories. Furthermore, some theories in use, such as the one summarized by the widely accepted aphorism “What you can't measure, you can't manage”, seem to imply that a performance measurement system designed according to certain basic principles is a prerequisite for high performance.

This chapter is simple in its layout and objectives. First, we identify a minimal set of principles for designing performance measurement systems that can be extracted from theories in a wide variety of academic disciplines and applied settings. We arrive at three principles that we believe will seem unobjectionable to most performance measurement proponents. Second, we present four vignettes that describe actual events from the airline industry in which the principles of performance measurement seem to be deliberately subverted in order to produce high performance.