MEASURING THE PERFORMANCE OF DOCUMENT SUPPLY SYSTEMS

As document supply grows in volume and importance it becomes more necessary to measure its performance. Nearly all measures are relative — over time, across countries, and between systems; they should therefore be consistent and comparable. The main measures are: fill rate (broken down by subject, form and date); speed (broken down into the various processes involved in document supply); user satisfaction (because users' needs may not be articulated); and costs. There may be trade‐offs between different measures (eg speed and costs). Any measurement system must be practical. Most data will be collected by sampling, but well designed automated systems in future should enable better measures to be calculated with less effort.