Friday 11 February 2011

The Misuse of perfomance indicators.

Here is an example of the ridiculous  use  of Key Performance Indicators ( KPI's ) .The local bus operator was granted a licence and one of the terms of this licence was that they should reach a specific percentage of "on time" measures which specified how many minutes early or late the bus would be at a timed stop.
Unfortunately at certain times of the day,  as we all know, the traffic is  heavier than others, particularly when wet, so buses are invariably running late.
Now it is obvious that the tedious necessity of stopping to pick up passengers is likely to slow the progress of the buses and so they would not meet the target times as defined.
Therefore the genius management devised a way round this by allowing the drivers to change the destination board to "Sorry - Out of Service - Drop Down Only" so that they would not be inconvenienced by having to pickup these troublesome passengers.
The logical extension of this amazing solution to keeping up their target figures is that fewer people take the buses and more take to their cars. This will increase the amount of traffic so that more and more buses will be late etc,
Maybe we customers would prefer our buses to run on time rather than pick us up in the cold and the wet thereby delaying the progress of the bus. So perhaps, dear fellow traveller, when you see your late bus drawing near your stop, please think of others and wave it hurriedly past, happy in the knowledge that when it comes around the second or third time it will actually be on time.

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