Integrating Theory and Methods for Operational Performance Assessment

这笔赠款支持对评估工业运作的相对效率和确定最佳做法的创新方法的研究。该评估方法同时考虑了消耗的所有重要资源和产生的所有重要产品或服务，与从大量类似操作样本估计的最佳实际绩效相比，对单个操作进行了分析。该方法以经济生产理论为基础，要求对一个细分行业中所有业务所共有的资源和产品进行仔细的规范。基准方法利用了对大样本业务的相对效率评估及其潜在的解释性属性。基准方法寻找属性和相对效率之间的统计相关性，并要求仔细指定解释性属性和应用统计方法。评估和基准方法都将用于使用现成的互联网技术进行试验，并将针对出版仓库进行重点案例研究。如果成功，直接的实际影响是为行业内的公司提供一种快速和经济的方法，以确定其相对于行业内其他公司的整体效率，并确定其行业内的“最佳实践”。以仓储为例，初步结果显示，在一个占GDP 2.5%的行业，平均相对效率仅为73%。如果更广泛地部署最佳实践可以将行业相对效率提高到仅80%，则每年可能节省近250亿美元。理论上的影响有几种形式。首先是创建一个独特的数据资源，在此基础上可以更好地理解业务建模。在仓储方面，这种模型将开始将具体做法与具体类型的仓库要求联系起来。这项研究还将有助于对绩效进行经济分析的工具和方法。

This grant supports research on innovative approaches to assessing relative efficiency of industrial operations and identifying best practices. The assessment approach simultaneously considers all the important resources consumed and all the important products or services produced, in an analysis of a single operation compared to the best practical performance estimated from a large sample of similar operations. The method is based on economic production theory and requires careful specification of the resources and products common to all operations in an industry segment. The benchmarking approach utilizes the relative efficiency assessments of a large sample of operations, along with their potential explanatory attributes. The benchmarking method looks for statistical correlations between attributes and relative efficiencies, and requires both careful specification of the explanatory attributes and application of statistical methods. Both assessment and benchmarking methods will be deployed for experimentation using readily available internet technologies, and a focused case study will be performed for publishing warehouses.If successful, the immediate practical impact is to provide firms in an industry a fast and economical method to determine their overall efficiency relative to other firms in their industry, and also to identify "best practices" within their industry. In the case of warehousing, for example, preliminary results show an average relative efficiency of only 73 percent in an industry accounting for 2.5 percent of GDP. If a broader deployment of best practices could improve the industry relative efficiency to only 80 percent, the potential savings approaches $25 billion per year. The theoretical impacts take several forms. First is the creation of a unique data resource upon which a better understanding of operational modeling can be developed. In the case of warehousing, such a model would begin to associate specific practices with specific types of warehouse requirements. The research also will contribute to the tools and methods for economic analysis of performance.