Definition: What is operational excellence?

Operational excellence, or Opex for short, is a holistic, strategic management approach. It describes the ability of companies to continuously review and optimize core processes along the value chain in terms of effectiveness and efficiency.

What are the benefits of operational excellence?

Operational excellence aims for perfectly optimized processes - in other words, for everything to run as smoothly as possible. It is not surprising that such excellent processes bring with them a range of benefits. These include

• improving company performance and ensuring long-term competitiveness
• increasing efficiency through optimal use of resources and faster, leaner and more cost-effective processes
• quality improvements thanks to binding standards and continuous improvement processes
• increased customer satisfaction and customer loyalty
• higher profitability by avoiding waste and improving profit margins
• greater flexibility and adaptability to market and environmental changes
• the promotion of employee satisfaction and commitment
• greater resilience through robust processes and resilient structures

Operational excellence tools

Operational excellence is the goal of your optimization processes. On the way there, you have numerous tools at your disposal with which you can optimize processes and procedures. Depending on the suitability for your company, you can combine the following management methods, for example:

• Lean Manufacturing
• Six Sigma
• Total Quality Management (TQM)
• Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)
• agile methods
• support through digital tools

Which methods are suitable for your company depends largely on your company's requirements. The selected methods must be suitable for

• your industry
• the products and services you offer
• the size of your company
• your corporate strategy

Achieving operational excellence: How to proceed

1. Evaluate the current status

Your current processes are the starting point for your targeted optimization measures. Analyze them and identify specific potential for optimization.

2. Set goals

Where should your Opex journey take you? Of course, to optimal processes. But how will you know if you have reached your goal? Define clear KPIs (key performance indicators) - preferably according to the SMART principle. This states what the KPI must be:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attractive
• Relevant
• Terminable

The key performance indicators that ultimately emerge will of course depend on your company and the individual conditions.

3. Develop a plan

You now know your situation and where you want to go. Now it's time to define how you will get there. Develop an action plan that

• specifies the time periods for each section or step
• defines clear responsibilities
• ensures that employees are involved from the outset

4. Train your employees

And since we're talking about your employees: train them in all fundamental changes and use established methods such as the ADKAR model. It consists of the following phases:

• Awareness: This is where you create an awareness of the need for change.
• Desire: Awaken the motivation of your employees to participate in the change.
• Knowledge: Provide the know-how required for successful implementation.
• Ability: Promote the ability to implement the changes.
• Reinforcement: Establish measures to anchor the change in the long term.

Goals of operational excellence

Operational Excellence aims to sustainably strengthen the corporate culture and increase the efficiency of operational processes.

To this end, you identify and leverage optimization potential along the entire value chain as part of Opex.

Your path to operational excellence inevitably leads you past the manual processes in your production hall. There is guaranteed to be optimization potential lying dormant here, which you can leverage efficiently with a worker assistance system like weasl.

You can find out exactly what this can look like in our free showcase environment.