A qualitative study on the alignment among competitive strategy, operations improvement priorities and manufacturing and logistics performance measurement systems

Several contributions claim that the manufacturing and logistics performance measurement system (PMS) should be designed according to a principle of alignment between the com-petitive strategy and the operations strategy. This paper aims at verifying whether PMS of manufacturing plants are actually designed and used as stated in the academic literature. After a review of the most influential literature on this topic, we discuss the empirical findings of a qualitative study conducted through a case-based methodology. The findings highlight that, although operations managers of the observed plants state that they are committed to the improvement of the manufacturing and logistics performances more relevant in the client’s perspective, there is a misalignment between the improvement priorities and the functional PMS of the plants observed in this study. Such phenomenon depends on two factors: a perception of operations managers about their responsibility on specific performances; the availability of technologies, managerial tools and practices suitable for improving specific performances.