Monitoring

Monitoring is supervising activities in progress to ensure they are on-course and on-schedule in meeting the objectives and performance targets.

Recent advances in information technology have focused attention on the importance of good information systems to support logistics and distribution activities. This requirement for information has always existed, but the computer has enabled the development of more sophisticated means of data storage, processing and presentation.

Monitoring aims for

• To enable the achievement of current and future business objectives – where these are directly linked to associated logistics and distribution objectives.
• To facilitate the effective provision of logistics services, thus enabling checks to be made that the distribution operation is appropriate for the overall objectives.
• To enable the efficient operation of logistics resources, to ensure that the distribution operation is run as well as it can be
• To support the planning and control of an operation, so that any information can be fed back to the process of planning and management.

Business performance can mean many different things. Improving the business performance is accomplished by a comprehensive, systemic approach to managing accountability on an organizational as well as individual basis. Business performance measurement has a variety of uses and it is be measured to

• Monitor and control
• Drive improvement
• Maximize the effectiveness of the improvement effort
• Achieve alignment with organizational goals and objectives
• Reward and discipline

Different frameworks and reference models are used for measuring business performance, which usually includes the balanced scorecard and KPI