A new approach of supply network performance measurement based on supporting level and operational level

The successful application of Advanced Manufacturing Technologies (AMT) has brought remarkable effects and benefits to most companies after many years of accumulated practical experiences. However, along with unceasing improvement of people’s living standard and increasing aggravation of market competition, competitions between companies are more and more intensive and growing up to competitions between supply networks. How to realize the target of “reducing cost and improving service together” on the level of networks becomes the very knotty problem for every company and their supply networks. As the effective instrument for aligning node companies within their network, AMT accomplishes sharing information and coordinative operational among companies through its hard technologies (such as robotics, computers and other scientific technologies) and soft technologies (managerial technologies such as TQM, JIT, VMI, E-Business, etc.). ^[1] They also play a very important role in the coordination of the relationship between node enterprises. As the method of organization development, performance measurement’s effect is not only to evaluate current performance, but to guide future development direction of the whole supply network. Therefore, the investments which could bring potential benefits to supply networks, such as AMT, must be taken into account when build up performance measurement systems. This paper establishes an equitable measurement system including supporting evaluation level (consisting of HITS - Human, Institution, Technology and Surroundings) and operational evaluation level (consisting of TQFS - Time, Quality, Finance and Service) to break through the traditional measurement methods which only concentrate on current performance, while pay more attention to supply networks’ further development. Moreover, this paper introduces the evaluation of relationship among node companies into measurement system which is cardinal significant for the supply networks’ coordinative development as well.