1-28 Balanced Scorecard Johnson Industrial Controls, Inc. (JIC), is a large manufacturer of specialized instruments used in automated manufacturing plants. JIC has grown steadily over the past several years on the strength of technological innovation in its key product lines. The firm now employs 3,500 production employees and 450 staff and management personnel in six large plants located across the United States. In the past few years, the growth of sales and profits has declined sharply, because of the entrance into the market of new competitors. As part of a recent strategic planning effort, JIC iden- tified its key competitive strengths and weaknesses. JIC management believe that the critical strengths are in the quality of the product and that the weakness in recent years has been in customer service, particularly in meeting scheduled deliveries. The failure to meet promised delivery dates can be quite costly to JIC’s customers, because it is likely to delay the construction or upgrading of the customers’ plants and therefore delay the customers’ production and sales.

JIC’s management believes that the adoption of the balanced scorecard for internal reporting might help the firm become more competitive.

Required

1. Explain how the balanced scorecard might help a firm like JIC.

2. Develop a brief balanced scorecard for JIC. Give some examples of the items that might be included in each of these four parts of the scorecard: (a) customer satisfaction, (b) financial performance, (c) manu- facturing and business processes, and (d) human resources.