This chapter has explained how Dynamic Performance Measures (DPMs) were a direct result of the evolution of process requirements that traditional cost accounting systems did not address. Once DPMs were installed and operating in process plants, the logical question then became whether and how they should associate with and link into these traditional cost accounting systems. Many DPMs are direct models of the cost or profit associated with a unit or area of a manufacturing process. One of the objectives of accounting systems is to resolve cost and profit issues, but the first DPMs to be installed were typically totally independent of their plant's accounting systems.

This separation of the DPMs from the accounting systems was initially not of much concern. The DPMs were being installed to generate information that had not traditionally been available, so making them available to accounting systems did not seem imperative, or even particularly desirable. DPMs were typically installed in the section of a process plant in which a drive was underway to perform activities that would improve economic performance. The DPMs provided the operations, engineering, and maintenance personnel with direct, real-time feedback on the performance of their section of the plant, and also allowed them to determine the economic impact of specific improvement activities. The problem was that when an activity had been completed and its economic value determined, the plant's management would often ask the finance department to provide confirmation of the economic improvement. The only tool the...