Assessment of engineering performance in industrial plant business: Challenges for economic considerations in engineering

The plant manufacturing business is characterized by intensifying competition and increasing market requirements. Manufacturers try to increase their competitiveness through the improvement of engineering performance. In order to have a reliable basis for management decisions, engineering performance must be assessed comprehensively. The meaningfulness of such holistic considerations is undisputed, but in industrial practice such holistic considerations are rare. In search for causes for this phenomenon the authors identified 13 challenges which oppose the conduction of comprehensive assessments based on an empirical study and expert interviews. These challenges have their origin in structural conditions of the plant business as well as the complex role of engineering, which is connected in multiple ways to other trades, stages in the value chain and phases of the plant life cycle. In this regard, the prediction of cost developments, the quantification of engineering impact and a lack of common understanding of engineering performance turned out to be the main hurdles for performance assessments in an engineering environment. By considering these challenges in future assessments, engineering can be improved more effectively and its potential to increase the profitability along the complete value-add chain can be seized more efficiently.