Developing and Implementing a Process-Performance Management System: Experiences from S-Y Systems Technologies Europe GmbH—A Global Automotive Supplier

(a) Situation faced: S-Y Systems Technologies Europe GmbH develops, manufactures, and distributes worldwide wire harnesses and associated components for automotive electronic distribution systems. Problems occurred with some automotive manufacturers’ ordering wire harnesses, who sent ordering files to the intermediate S-Y Systems to be converted, interpreted, enriched, and forwarded. Errors occurred even in the first steps of data processing errors (e.g., name, format, structure, content), but the exact allocation of errors in the process, the reasons for the errors, and their origin were not apparent. Therefore, S-Y Systems faced the challenge of investigating the processing errors, hoping to prove that the reason for most of these errors lay elsewhere. (b) Action taken: S-Y Systems decided to monitor their operative IT processes and started a Process Performance Management (PPM) project. PPM uses performance measurements to improve the performance of processes. Performance planning, monitoring, and controlling actions in PPM are strongly supported by process-oriented key performance indicators (KPIs) and IT systems. Our case describes a PPM approach to developing and implementing PPM systems and the results of applying this approach at S-Y Systems. (c) Results achieved: The findings from the case refer to the importance of a structured, top-down-oriented development procedure and provide concrete indications about the appropriate, goal-oriented, and useful KPIs of the processes to be monitored. (d) Lessons learned: The case reveals a clear risk of PPM projects’ losing their focus on the intrinsically relevant processes, the tasks in the processes, and particularly the overall initial goal of the project. Losing focus explains why many projects generate too many or inappropriate KPIs. The PPM approach presented in this paper helps to keep the focus on the overall goal and enables companies to develop a PPM system, including the appropriate KPIs.