In an increasingly uncertain and competitive environment, organisations must focus their operations on the quality of their products and services, but also on managing their costs. This involves creating a company culture centred on a continuous improvement approach, based on solid methodologies and skills. In this sense, implementing an operational excellence method represents a major lever for competitiveness, growth, and even long-term success for companies, regardless of their sectors of activity (manufacturing, industry, etc.).
Operational excellence: Definition
The concept of operational excellence defines an approach whose purpose is to maximise overall company performance by continuously optimising its processes. The main objectives are to improve customer satisfaction and increase productivity gains, in line with the company’s strategic priorities. The whole challenge is to align every aspect of the company with creating value for customers such as lead times, prices, quality of products and services…
However, operational excellence methodologies apply throughout a company’s entire ecosystem. As Fabrice Gicquere, Customer Relationship Director at Manutan, points out in a B Smart video on the subject: "We regularly monitor how our customers feel, but that’s not the only thing we do. Every year, we also measure the satisfaction of our employees and suppliers. That’s how we ensure we deploy the operational experience on a daily basis through proof."
This approach is based on a clear vision guiding all the practices, operations and methodologies applied daily within the company, in a sustainable way. Too often associated with cost-cutting, operational excellence is more of a philosophy based on the search for solutions led by employees and incremental improvements of results at all levels of the company.
The benefits of operational excellence
The operational excellence model promises many advantages for businesses. Optimising flows, reducing costs and managing risks top the list.
Maximising flows
By optimising each step of their processes, organisations maximise their workflows. This allows them to gain efficiency, speed and agility. They are more responsive to changes in the market, but also to customer needs. They are thus better equipped to adapt quickly to these new conditions and to seize opportunities that arise.
Reducing costs
This is often cited as one of the main advantages by companies that adopt operational excellence. By optimising their processes, they achieve savings. This allows them to eliminate low value-added tasks, associated with waste and/or surpluses, and the associated costs. As a result, they can better allocate their resources.
Managing risks
Embarking on an operational excellence strategy involves establishing a systematic method to identify, prevent and manage risks. Through an in-depth understanding of processes, this allows organisations to anticipate any event that could affect them. A reality that is also reinforced by the culture of continuous improvement, solid control mechanisms and effective training programmes put in place. This is how organisations can control, or even reduce, their operational risks.
As you saw, business leaders can thus strengthen their market position by offering higher quality products and/or services, at competitive prices, with shorter delivery times. This allows them to gain a competitive advantage and meet customer expectations.
How to achieve operational excellence?
The whole challenge of operational excellence is to move from using tools to deploy a real management system. To achieve this ambition, organisations can focus on various success factors.
Relying on the right methodology
Operational excellence is based on various techniques and methodologies: Lean Management, of course, but also Lean Six Sigma, Kaizen, Kanban… These are all methodological supports to help teams in this approach. It is important to focus on the right tools, to adapt them to the company’s needs and then integrate them into its management systems.
Strengthening team skills
It is also important to support each team in developing their skills. This first involves a step of raising awareness and positive communication to generate employee interest. Then, it is about structuring and managing the skills development of each person, by combining different means such as academic Green/Black Belt type training, coaching or mentoring. "At Manutan, we have created an internal training programme, which incorporates the principles of Lean Management, in order to give employees all the keys to participate daily in optimising their work and processes," Fabrice adds.
Focusing on local managers
The local manager plays a key role in operational excellence. They must wear several hats: Activity coordination, resource orchestration and staff management. They must also develop coaching skills to upskill their teams.
Properly exploiting data
Exploiting data also helps guide teams’ daily actions. This information should be reported on dashboards, undergo in-depth analysis and be used to feed key performance indicators (KPIs). It is by adopting this "data-driven" vision that companies will become ever more efficient, agile and responsive.
Encouraging everyone’s engagement
Achieving operational excellence requires optimal business processes, but above all, on the involvement of every individual within the organisation. It is about raising awareness and engaging all employees to work together in this dynamic, because everyone contributes to the collective success. This involves encouraging collaboration, communication and innovation to create a true long-term continuous improvement culture.
Operational excellence is an essential approach for a company’s long-term success. It requires adopting an approach focused on process optimisation, continuous improvement and every employee’s engagement. It is by following these operational excellence core principles that companies will be able to strengthen their efficiency, flexibility and competitiveness, in the service of an improving overall performance.
