Analog Devices: 1986-1991

The First Balanced Scorecard^©

by

Arthur M. Schneiderman

In January of 1989, I presented the Analog Story at an APICS conference held at Babson College and chaired by Prof. Ash Rao (see: January 1989 APICS/Babson presentation with transcript).  A few days after that conference, I created the following slide to better explain how data cascaded through the various scorecards that we employed:

Analog had two principal non-financial databases: the order entry system and the manufacturing lot travelers (the documentation that moved with the in-process inventory).  From these databases, data was extracted to provide reports for tracking delivery performance, yield by product and process step, etc.  These reports than provide results for the Division Scorecards, which in turn were aggregated to produce the corporate scorecard.  Over time, the reports that provided the inputs to the division scorecards began to take on the appearance of scorecards themselves, as this method of providing organizational focus became of increasing perceived value.  In this way, specific scorecards supporting division scorecard metrics began to appear.  These included, for example, the yield scorecard, ppm scorecard, and time-and-cost to market scorecard.

Telling the Analog Devices story to hundreds of our customers throughout the world became a major part of my job responsibilities.  I was also invited to tell share Analog's experience at many business conferences.  I've included approximately annual snapshots of that continuously evolving Analog Devices Story presentation (with transcripts) covering the years of 1989 through 1991.