Evaluation of productivity and quality performance in a newspaper preprint insertion process

Abstract

Productivity and quality of a manufacturing process are seen as important factors for short and long term success of a company. Measuring productivity and quality provides the means to assess performance trends of the process, providing a powerful management tool for decision making. Data Envelopment Analysis is a tool that can be used to measure productivity and quality performance.

Productivity and quality performance were measured using Data Envelopment Analysis for a newspaper preprint insertion process. Hybrid performance models combining productivity and quality performance were also evaluated using Data Envelopment Analysis. Finally, the possible underlying relationship between productivity and quality was investigated.

The major findings of this research are:

* Productivity and quality performance trends obtained from the study provide realistic assessment of performance of the newspaper preprint insertion process. * The trends of the hybrid performance models were not able to accurately assess the performance of the newspaper preprint insertion process. * There does not seem to be a link between productivity and quality in the newspaper preprint insertion process for the time period studied.