Dickeson--Use the Right Efficiency Formula

How, then, shall we measure the productivity of a printing company? Don't suggest dividing chargeable hours by hours available!

Until someone suggests something better, my crude number is sales, less materials (value-added), divided by the number of people on the payroll—annualized.

Productivity needs some ideal number for an index or benchmark for monitoring change. You pick it for your company. Can't do it? Just take value-added per head for last year as a default. That's your base point. Say it's $80K per head. If the next quarter comes in at $60K per head, your productivity has fallen 25 points! If it comes in at $85K, productivity's up 6.25 percent.