Be ready for the future’s why of your company

Stefan Lanssens has written an article on his interpretation of the Global State of Operational Excellence Survey Report - Critical Challenges & Future Trends - 2018/2019.  Click here to download the full Survey Report 2018/19.  

The Most Comprehensive Study of Critical Challenges and Future Trends within Operational Excellence

With nearly 1000 respondents, 37 insightful questions, detailed analysis & insights from 40 industry thought leaders, and the BTOES Insights executive team, this 130 page report is recognised as the most comprehensive study of critical challenges and future trends within Operational Excellence, and is considered a key resource for the industry. Areas covered include:

• The Critical Operational Excellence Challenges faced by executives.

• The Current Scope of Operational Excellence.

• How is Operational Excellence success measured?

• Key Findings & Roadblocks.

• What are executives focusing on over the next 12-18 months?

• What have been the greatest developments?

• What are the key drivers pushing change in Operational Excellence?

• Industry Perspectives.

• Small, Medium & Large Corporation Perspectives.

• Detail Analysis & Insights from BTOES Insights Executive Team.

• Detailed Analysis & Insights from 40 Industry Thought Leaders.

• Analysis of key themes, including Cultural Transformation, Customer Delight, Sustaining an Operational Excellence program, Need for end-to-end Business Transformation, Keeping up with new technologies/impact of digitalization and Leadership Buy-in & Understanding.

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Be ready for the future’s why of your company

About ten years ago Operation Excellence was embraced in some companies with precaution. Even with great care when you wanted to hire one or other Operational Excellence Manager. At that time your company could be considered to be in trouble, in deep trouble even. Today Operational Excellence is widely spread and has many names and faces: continuous improvement, Lean & Six Sigma, OPEX and one or other Company’s Production System. We are convinced now that Operational Excellence deserves a place in the organization chart of our company. It seems to make sense. Click here to read the full Survey Report 2018/19. 

But what will the future bring?

Change is common and we need to change even if we do not know exactly why or how. Our managers are changing with the same pace. So, more changes to come. Consolidation of companies, the race to become the fattest is giving space to agility. Either to smaller companies or to those real leaders of big companies. The industry’s future is about committed leadership. Leadership to help see clear beyond the chaos of change today, beyond the need for anything that is disruptive, beyond the change to change. Click here to read more Articles on The Global State of Operational Excellence: Critical Challenges & Future Trends - Research Report 2018/19.

How can Operational Excellence help us?

The Opex toolbox might attack the symptoms but not the disease. Hoshin Kanri is one of those tools helping leaders to formulate the how of the business’ change to be cascaded down effectively. If this is accompanied by defining challenging objectives in one’s annual Performance Review it will work. That is what committed leadership is about. As with any tool the added value is not really the tool itself but the way you walked to understand it fully. Intrinsically Policy Deployment (Hoshin Kanri) gives us a peace of mind in an ever faster changing world. So, do we really need to change our company’s culture and what we stand for? Up till now the why of the business was not a question to be asked: it was fixed forever.

That is what the real future is about; is my why still relevant?

Bitcoin technology will prove that banks today are losing sight of their added value of tomorrow. The known consequences of the reduction of FTE’s due to digital payments can already be seen today. The real challenge for leaders today is to give shape to the future’s existence (the why) of the company, to keep focus, to communicate this and to look for Operational Excellence tools and new technologies to be embraced. Leaders building the future, understand the real need of tools to underpin the new why and not just having them for the sake of having them.

What can we expect from new technologies?

New technologies will be cloud based and peer-to-peer. Blockchain technology used in Bitcoin will change the way of thinking in Supply Chain Management. Each block can be produced by one or other software but at the end everybody can access and rely on the data. It is a peer-to-peer technology which is faster with almost no third parties’ control. Agility is what we need with a constant access to our cloud’s data. At the same time, we cannot forget the existing Operational Excellence tools by which we find our evidence within the Gemba, the place where added value is created for our customer. Go and see, ask why and show respect. Be ready for the future’s why of your company.