The man who beats the machine

1. This was the headline in one of the newsletters published by the multinational Bata Shoe company some 30 years ago.
2. It wrote about a Malaysian worker whose performance is better than the machine and hence he would not be replaced by the machine.  
3. The Bata group of companies had introduced a machine to replace one set of manual function in all their shoe factories world wide.
4. However, the management surprisingly found that one worker in Malaysia would not be replaced by the machine because his output performance has been recorded to be more efficient than the machine.
5. What was the significant of this report?  It shows that performance measurement was already in place in all Bata companies throughout the world. 
6. This also went to prove that Bata would not mechanize a job until and unless it was proven that the new technology was better than the old manual.
7. Without performance measurement, there should not be any news of this sort.  The introduction of technology would simply be based on guess work or follow the Jones or the crowd.
8. It is no wonder that Bata has maintained its long global record to be among the best managed company in the world.

Performance measurement should exists prior to or before any decision on the change of new technology could take place.

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