Working with the IfM

Strategy and Performance

Solutions for planning long-term business stragetgy and monitoring and improving performance.

Make vs Buy

Business leaders are under increasing pressure to focus scarce resources on core activities, but the resulting moves to outsource can result in the loss of business-critical capabilities and undermine the firm's basis for competition and customer satisfaction. More than ever it is vital to have a structured approach to the "Make or Buy" decision (or increasingly "Do" or "Buy" as service-sector companies adopt best practice methodologies). …more…

Business strategy

The strategic direction of a business can be affected by various external and internal drivers such as market and technology changes, mergers or acquisitions, and manufacturing and supply chain redesigns. Reviewing the strategy in response to these factors is critical to enable the business to remain competitive and to create sustainable long-term growth. …more…

Performance measurement

Understanding how your business is performing is essential to remain competitive, but it is extremely difficult to achieve in practice. Modern managers are interested in knowing: How well do we satisfy our customers? How good are our internal processes? What must we excel at to be successful in the future?

What is needed is a ‘balanced scorecard’, tailor-made for your business – but how can you design this and thereby create a really effective measurement system? Researchers at the Institute for Manufacturing have spent more than 15 years helping companies develop and implement performance measurement systems.