L’operational excellence and process optimization increase team productivity and performance while reducing costs.
What is operational excellence?
Managers manage their industry in a specific way, according to the needs on the ground. The ever-changing labour market often requires innovation within the management system to optimise the development of its business and avoid problems that could impact on production.
Operational excellence is about the balance between resources, process implementation and the logistics system. This objective requires transformations that take place through changes in methods and adaptation of the logistics system. The aim is to increase turnover and to maintain an excellent relationship with partners and customers. There are various methods to achieve this operational excellence, in order to maintain the balance within all business areas.
A tool to reach
operational excellence at work?
Methods of change
Regardless of which change method is chosen, the goal of operational excellence remains the same. Through the development of a specific process, the business enterprise will be able to structure its new organizational objectives in an optimal way. Here is a description of three different approaches to optimize the overall functioning of your industry: Agile, Kaisen and Lean management.
The Agile innovation process
The fundamental principles of Agile methodology are based on evolutionary planning, continuous improvement and rapid implementation of processes. The objective is to meet the needs of the market in a simple and quick way. This process supports and encourages work teams to collaborate with effective tools to achieve their goals. The employees of each department are committed to regularly presenting their work in order to receive constructive criticism for implementing and following the new guidelines.
This process also includes regular participation in working meetings where a report is made on what is going well. This makes it possible to define what remains to be improved in order to prepare the next steps to be taken. The use of Agile is often associated with the use of Kanban or Scrum techniques.
Kanban
The Kanban process is based on the principle of priorities. Tasks are prioritized, regardless of the time required to complete them. This type of approach is optimal for small professional teams that are not bound by fixed deadlines.
Scrum
Scrum is a concept that relies on the distribution of tasks by defined work periods. These stages, called sprints, last between one week and one month. This work process is well suited to engineering professionals who market software. The objective of the intense sprints is to increase the performance of the employees, so that they focus their attention on the problem at hand. Close collaboration with each stakeholder is necessary for this approach to work.
The Kaisen Method
Borrowed from the Japanese language, the word Kaizen literally means “continuous improvement”. This approach is based on a holistic approach that includes the involvement of all staff in the development and implementation of improvements in various areas of activity. It is recommended that you specifically target the areas that require change. These vary according to the specific needs of the company. In the organizational field of the business company, the Kaisen Method enables positive and sustainable changes. The three pillars of this technique are based on:
- choosing the right process to achieve results that meet your requirements
- the importance of teamwork to achieve the transformation objectives set
- the need to improve all processes
Lean management
The principles of lean management aim to limit waste in production and to supply more closely to customer values. The problems of waste are diverse. It is important for managers to be able to identify them in order to make the appropriate changes to achieve theoperational excellence quality. Here is an overview of the points to be taken into consideration to obtain an improvement, in coherence with the expectations and the stakes of the company:
- The respect of the company’s expansion rhythm allows to avoid the overproduction of goods;
- documents containing information on the innovations carried out (productivity, personnel, protocol, etc.) must be regularly updated;
- the skills of each member of the professional teams must be exploited to the full;
- Professional meetings should be focused on useful and productive content;
- once a process step has been integrated and put into practice, move directly to the next step to save time;
- the change of storage location of the goods must make sense to avoid unnecessary work;
- inventories should allow for better management of perishable materials;
- the process flow must be efficient and aim at adding value for the customers;
- The preservation of the health of the personnel and the company requires the limitation of repetitive movements and useless efforts which can generate accidents, disturb the organization and generate additional costs.