Resources in Operational Excellence (OPEX)

Our focus on Operational Excellence (OE) is on the alignment of strategies, processes, performers, measures, technologies and management to achieve and sustain outstanding levels of performance of the entire enterprise.

Our belief is that Operational Excellence is achievable only when an organization has defined the major elements that affect performance and aligned them (which often means redesigning them) to support strategies and goals.

Just as often the task of alignment also means ridding the organization of things (practices, policies, organization structures) that impede Operational Excellence.

Displaying 21 - 30 of 263 resources matching your criteria.

Meet the Author: Kimberly Watson-Hemphill, Innovating Lean Six Sigma

In this webcast, author Kimberly Watson-Hemphill will share some highlights from her new book, Innovating Lean Six Sigma (McGraw-Hill, 2016), and provide practical tips every business leader can use to get more from their Lean Six Sigma deployment. Special Offer for BPMInstitute.org Members
Get your copy of Innovating Lean Six Sigma at 45% off the list price. Take advantage of this offer

Lean Six Sigma and Business Process Management – Better Together

Contributed by:Marvin Wurtzel, Faculty Member, BPMInstitute.org and Principal Consultant, Marvin M. Wurtzel & Associates, Inc.

Operational Excellence stresses the application of a variety of principles, systems, and tools toward the sustainable improvement of performance through process improvement.

This management philosophy is based on applying methodologies, such as BPM and Lean Six Sigma. The focus of Operational Excellence goes beyond the traditional event-based model of improvement toward a long-term change in organizational culture.

One of the most powerful ways to improve business performance is combining business process management (BPM) methods with Lean Six Sigma methods. BPM emphasizes process improvements and automation to drive performance improvement, while Lean Six Sigma uses statistical analysis to drive quality improvements. The two methodologies have been considered by times to be mutually exclusive, however, some savvy companies have discovered that combining BPM and Lean Six Sigma can create dramatic results.

BPM Basics

Making the case for OpEx and BPM

The integration of Operational Excellence, which relies on a proven, systematic set of tools in Lean Six Sigma, and Business Process Management (BPM), which relies on a systemic view and a technology enabled approach is likely to create greater value for both customers and the company. The integration and consolidation of these two approaches to process improvement will not only identify and eliminate waste, it will also align and better utilize information systems, promote cross departmental collaboration and keep the customer front and center throughout.

An Introduction to Operational Excellence

Contributed by:Marvin Wurtzel, Faculty Member, BPMInstitute.org and Principal Consultant, Marvin M. Wurtzel & Associates, Inc.

Operational Excellence is not easy to define. Some descriptions are too broad. Others are so narrow that the ultimate definition seems too focused in scope. Often, we end up with definitions that seem plausible in an academic sense, such as “Being world class,” “Being the best globally,” or, “Excellence in everything we do,” but these are difficult to translate into specific practices.

To properly define Operational Excellence, there is value in looking at the evolution of the term.

In "The Discipline of Market Leaders - Choose your Customers, Narrow your Focus, Dominate your Market", Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema described three distinct value propositions or disciplines an organization could choose to compete in their market or industry - Operational Excellence, Product Leadership, and Customer Intimacy.

Process Ownership

Contributed by:Andrew Spanyi, Faculty Member, DBizInstitute.org and Managing Director, Spanyi International

The late, great Yogi Berra once said, “Baseball is 90% mental and the other half is physical.” We could say something similar – “process ownership is ninety percent leadership and the other half is management.”

Process ownership was arguably first described by Dr. Geary Rummler and Mr. Alan Brache , in their book ,Improving Performance: How to Manage the White Space on the Organization Chart in 1990. They described the role of process owners as one which intended to “oversee the cross-functional performance of a process.” Note that it did not attempt to “represent a second organizational structure” - instead it was described as a role that emphasized collaboration across organizational boundaries.

The Life Cycle of BPM Centers of Excellence - Part 2

Contributed by:Shelley Sweet, Faculty Member, BPMInstitute.org and President, i4 Process

In Part 1, I discussed how one BPM Center of Excellence (COE) started as a centralized organization and then after 2 years moved some of the BPM Practitioners into specific operational units and disbanded the centralized group. Part 2 continues with the life cycle of this use case in its second stage, ‘decentralization’ and then continues to a third stage.

Organizational Alignment

Contributed by:Andrew Spanyi, Faculty Member, DBizInstitute.org and Managing Director, Spanyi International

For decades, the question that has been observed to be top of mind for many executives is “How should we be organized to be able to achieve our strategic objectives?”

Perhaps that explains why leaders select reorganization or restructuring as the single most frequently practiced method of change management. To test this out, simply ask yourself how often your company has modified the organization chart in the top two to three levels during the past three years? If you answered less than three times, you are probably in the minority.

The Life Cycle of BPM Centers of Excellence - Part 1

Contributed by:Shelley Sweet, Faculty Member, BPMInstitute.org and President, i4 Process

The number of companies that have a BPM Center of Excellence (COE) has not grown over the last eight years (It’s stable at about 34% according to a BPTrends survey.). In trying to guesstimate why that might be happening, I have been asking these questions:

1. When do companies start a COE and why?

2. What do COE employees do?

3. How do COE’s change and what causes these changes?

This article focuses on the last question, but responds to the first two in the specific examples.

Leadership as a Process

Contributed by:Renée Gendron, Owner, Vitae Dynamics Inc.

Cora was new at her position and her company. She had been brought in to manage a project that was not performing well. The project was well behind its deadlines and so over budget it amazed Cora that the company still wanted to go ahead with it. Knowing that there would be a lot of pressure on Cora and her team to salvage the project, Cora set her mind to getting to know as much as possible about the project from day one.

It was obvious to Cora that the team had tried many solutions and strategies and all of them failed. The team knew the goal but not the way to achieve it. So for the first days she listened. She went to see each and every one of her team members to introduce herself, get to know them a little bit, and get their take on what was happening with the project.

What to do in BPM When You are Starting, Growing or Dying

Contributed by:Shelley Sweet, Faculty Member, BPMInstitute.org and President, i4 Process

STARTING:

Are you ready to look at your work from a customer’s perspective?
Do you want to streamline workflows to increase your competitive advantage?

GROWING:

Have you been doing process improvement projects for more than a year? Now…

Do you want to take your organization to larger returns—seeing the benefits of end-to-end improvements?
Would you like to build continuous improvement behaviors into daily management and employee life?

DYING: