--- title: Industry Perspectives - Research Report 2018/19 description: "Read 'Industry Perspectives' an extract of 'The Global State of Operational Excellence: Critical Challenges & Future Trends' Research Report 2018/19 by Vijay Bajaj. Download the full report now!" --- [Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Insights](https://insights.btoes.com) # [Industry Perspectives - Research Report 2018/19](https://insights.btoes.com/research-report-2018/19-industry-perspectives) Written by [Vijay Bajaj](https://insights.btoes.com/author/vijay-bajaj) | Jan 6, 2019, 2:00:00 PM   Below is a selection of the responses that were derived from all the open ended questions sorted by industry sector. A small number of responses have been selected from various industry sectors to ensure they add new impactful context to the question, which in this section has been included as part of the response to give it context. Responses have also been selected to give the unique perspectives each industry is facing. If you want to learn more on the **[Research Report 2018/19](https://insights.btoes.com/download-research-report-2018/19-the-global-state-of-operational-excellence-critical-challenges-future-trends)** click here.   **Advertising and Marketing** *"I believe the greatest development in operational excellence in the past 5 years is aI driven responses and iteration for improvement."* Founder/CEO  Advertising, Marketing   **Aerospace and Defense** *"Our primary measure of success for the operational excellence program will be Return on Investment - tangible and Intangible; also measured through a 2 yearly employee survey across a number of dimensions."* Head of Business Assurance & Improvement  Aerospace and Defense *"Our focus for the next 12-18 months in operational excellence will be establishing 5S and visual management. Training and manufacturing velocity are current focus as there is no understanding of orders once they are in the system."* Continuous Improvement Lead Aerospace and Defense   **Airlines** *"Our primary measure of success for the operational excellence program will be embedding CI methodologies in the day to day work and ensuring continual improvement across the organisation."* Consultant Business Excellence Airlines *"I see the key drivers pushing change in the operational excellence ecosystem as demand from customers for quality and cost competitiveness."* Business Improvement Manager Airlines *" The most critical operational excellence focused challenges affecting my job role right now are Leadership understanding and buy-in. sustaining and Integrating the operational excellence methodology into the fiber of the organization would be smoother if and when there existed continuous & regular follow-up. Understanding and accountability on the leadership."* Business Improvement Manager Airlines   **Apparel** *"I see the key drivers pushing change in the operational excellence ecosystem as top management decision making over the changes to be made and middle staff acknowledgement of the needs."* Director Apparel   **Automotive Retailing, Services** *"We would most like to hear from an expert about advanced tools for OPEX, incorporation of Design thinking approach in OPEX."* EGM- Operational Excellence Automotive Retailing, Services [Back to top](https://insights.btoes.com/research-report-2018/19-industry-perspectives?hs_amp=true#BTT) **Building Materials, Glass** *"Our focus for the next 12-18 months in operational excellence will be to improve our production capacity and reliability in terms of quality and delivery."* Production Manager Building Materials, Glass **Chemicals** *"Our focus for the next 12-18 months in operational excellence will be Improving culture and leveraging technology."* Group Manufacturing Excellence Director  Chemicals *"I see the key drivers pushing change in the operational excellence ecosystem as Global competition and need for more efficient operations and more agile teams."* Owner Chemicals *"The most critical operational excellence focused challenges affecting my job role right now are end to end business transformation. We've locked value into how we do business via inefficiencies in our systems. extracting that value is critical and operational excellence is an element in the strategy to do this."* TES Director USGC and Maintenance Expertise Center Chemicals   **Commercial Banks** *"Our focus for the next 12-18 months in operational excellence will be Improving customer experiences, creating consistent and measurable benchmarks and replicating results."* Head of Technical Solutions, Global Payments Services Commercial Banks *"The most critical operational excellence focused challenges affecting my job role right now are Failure to innovate - the ability to adapt and use new tools and new technologies to improve operational excellence and efficiency."* Head of Technical Solutions, Global Payments Services Commercial Banks *"Executing and sustaining OPEX projects. There is a strong tendency to start an opeX project and then in 1-2 months decrease it down to several to-dos without serious OPEX effect. Managers prefer to show off the activity and then neutralise whatever is external to their function even on a cross-functional project."* Head of Performance Improvement Back Office Commercial Banks   **Computer Software** *"Our focus for the next 12-18 months in operational excellence will be Integrating agile and Data science with a highly successful six sigma program."* Six Sigma Master Black Belt Computer Software *"The most critical operational excellence focused challenges affecting my job role right now are the need for Leadership Understanding & Buy-In. This is really about making an investment in operational excellence with a consistent vision. We are constantly changing plans."* Program Manager Computer Software *"The most critical operational excellence focused challenges affecting my job role right now are Need for end to end transformation. We are on the way to doing this but it is painfully slow. We are integrating agile and Data science where needed to help accelerate."* Six Sigma Master Black Belt Computer Software   **Construction and Farm Machinery** *"I see the key drivers pushing change in the operational excellence ecosystem as top down & bottom up approach in implementing the change."* Sr. Operational Excellence Consultant  Construction and Farm Machinery   **Diversified Financials** *"The most critical operational excellence focused challenges affecting my job role right now are failure to innovate. employees are afraid of change, and any new idea reflects change."* Managing Principal Diversified Financials *The most critical operational excellence focused challenges affecting my job role right now is the need for end to end transformation. disparate OPEX efforts do not provide meaningful impact."* Senior Consultant Diversified Financials   **Diversified Outsourcing Services** *" I see the key drivers pushing change in the operational excellence ecosystem as customer retention, employee retention and margins."* CEO Diversified Outsourcing Services *"The most critical operational excellence focused challenges affecting my job role right now are customer centric employee engagement, global alignment to value."* CEO Diversified Outsourcing Services   **Education** *"Our focus for the next 12-18 months in operational excellence will be the introduction of new globally aligned processes and single suite of integrated systems."* Head of Supply Chain Operations Education *"I see the key drivers pushing change in the operational excellence ecosystem as today's "short-term engagement" employees who prefer to change companies rather than climbing the corporate ladder, causing companies to need to invest more time & effort in ensuring their clients/customers are happy interacting with them in their purchasing decisions."* Founder/Owner-Operator Education *"I see the key drivers pushing change in the operational excellence ecosystem as Developing executable strategies that show measurable transformation."* Director Quality & Compliance Education **Electronics, Electrical Equipment** *" Our primary measure of success for the operational excellence program will be meeting / anticipating customer needs and relentlessly delivering customer value."* Director-Lean Enterprise Electronics, Electrical Equipment *"Our focus for the next 12-18 months in operational excellence will be Value stream transformation and measuring the right KPIs for operational excellence."* Director Lean Six Sigma Electronics, Electrical Equipment *"Our focus for the next 12-18 months in operational excellence will be fully integrating cI methodology into quality."* CI & Quality Director AWS EMEA - SFC  Electronics, Electrical Equipment *"Our focus for the next 12-18 months in operational excellence will be enterprise wide agile and change management."* Director-Lean Enterprise Electronics, Electrical Equipment *"I see the key drivers pushing change in the operational excellence ecosystem as competitive landscape; customer relationship; Value chain integration; Focus on margins over revenue."* VP of Operations/Site Lead, Analytical Instruments BU Electronics, Electrical Equipment *"The most critical operational excellence focused challenges affecting my job role right now are end to end Business transformation. Managers have to come out of the short term "cost saving" mindset doing silo projects, rather should drive Value stream transformation to improve flow."* Director Lean Six Sigma Electronics, Electrical Equipment   **Energy** *"Our focus for the next 12-18 months in operational excellence will be alignment and standardization.*" Head of Business Transformation Energy *The most critical operational excellence focused challenges affecting my job role right now are need for end-to-end Business transformation (otherwise is sub-optimization)."* Head of Business Transformation Energy   **Engineering, Construction** *"I see the key drivers pushing change in the operational excellence ecosystem as the need to reduce cost as organisations are facing corporate-driven targets in cost and working capital reduction in an attempt to offset declining revenues. New technologies companies are scrambling to keep up with the latest technology, but these solutions are worthless without the right organisational culture to make the most of them. Cross-industry disruption as start-ups and technological innovation are making the market more competitive every day, across all industries."* Chief Engineer  Engineering, Construction [Back to top](https://insights.btoes.com/research-report-2018/19-industry-perspectives?hs_amp=true#BTT) **Financial Data Services** *"Our focus for the next 12-18 months in operational excellence will be to elevate the client experience."* President Financial Data Services *"I see the key drivers pushing change in the operational excellence ecosystem as RPA, BPM, real focus on the business drivers for success, client journey as primary focus."* Director Process Reengineering and Optimization Financial Data Services *"The most critical operational excellence focused challenge affecting my job role right now is the legacy core system. It's very difficult to transform 20th century database design & architecture to perform with 21st century efficiencies."* President Financial Data Services *"The most critical operational excellence focused challenge affecting my job role right now is culture. No matter how good your cI program is, if the company is not ready to adopt and transform, it will not fly."* AVP Financial Data Services   **Food & Beverage Consumer Products** *"Our primary measure of success for the operational excellence program will be New value to the business - impact on margin, employee experience, employee agility and productivity."* Director of Operations - Workplace Services  Food & Beverage Consumer Products *"Our primary measure of success for the operational excellence program will be customer satisfaction index, customer complaints, employees engagement score, reduction in non- added value activities."* AVP- Quality, Safety & Performance Excellence Food & Beverage Consumer Products *"Our focus for the next 12-18 months in operational excellence will be automation and Digitization, associate experience Improvements and operations productivity improvements."* Business Integration - Associate Services  Food & Beverage Consumer Products *"The most critical operational excellence focused challenge affecting my job role right now is end- to-end transformation. having our commercial team not on the same journey creates challenges on the ways of working and the priorities."* VP OPEX Food & Beverage Consumer Products *"The most critical operational excellence focused challenge affecting my job role right now is execution and sustaining OE - We spent so much funds and effort in the program, but we failed to see bottom line results - things are just going back to the way they were."* CI Manager Food & Beverage Consumer Products **Food Production** *"Our primary measure of success for the operational excellence program will be increase in customer satisfaction index. Reduction in cost of quality. Reduction in operating cost and working capital."* Senior Vice President - Operations Food Production   **Food Services** *"Our focus for the next 12-18 months in operational excellence will be to launch a gamification approach to accelerate the implementation."* SVP BIGS Food Services *"The most critical operational excellence focused challenges affecting my job role right now are need more agility, need more data intelligence, customer focus, pressure on results."* Senior Vice President - Operations Food Services   **Forest and Paper Products** *"Our focus for the next 12-18 months in operational excellence will be establishing cost curves of major assets, identifying root causes of limitations and countermeasures, optimizing assets and reducing variation."* Continuous Improvement Manager Forest and Paper Products   **Health Care: Medical Facilities** *"Our primary measure of success for the operational excellence program will be the ability to attract and retain the best employees, leaders, and executives."* CEO & Founder Health Care: Medical Facilities *"Our focus for the next 12-18 months in operational excellence will be to focus on $500 million dollars of revenue enhancements and cost reductions."* VP of Operational Effectiveness Health Care: Medical Facilities *"I see the key drivers pushing change in the operational excellence ecosystem In healthcare - as Innovation, cost out, population health (keep people well)."* Director, Performance Improvement Health Care: Medical Facilities *"The most critical operational excellence focused challenges affecting my job role right now are lack of support from employees. employee engagement is very important for implementing and sustaining the change. We want to do better in this area."* Lead Management Engineer Health Care: Medical Facilities   **Health Care: Pharmacy and Other Services** *" I see the key drivers pushing change in the operational excellence ecosystem as a challenging healthcare market requiring different leadership mindset and adaptable and efficient management systems."* Medical Office Chief Health Care: Pharmacy and Other Services   **Hospitals** *"The most critical operational excellence focused challenge affecting my job role right now is the need to improve relationships between departments. Hospitals are very complex enterprises. The care of the patients is nonlinear and should flow throughout several departments. Each department needs to understand their role in this flow and their interactions."* MD MBA Hospitals   **Hotels, Casinos, Resorts** *"I see the key drivers pushing change in the operational excellence ecosystem as Market challenges, competitiveness and adaptability."* Owner and Co-Founder Hotels, Casinos, Resorts   **Household and Personal Products** *"The most critical operational excellence focused challenge affecting my job role right now is keeping up with New technologies - as the processes are more digitized and needs to be available on demand to the right stakeholder with the right info. For effective decision making. "* Global P2P Manager Household and Personal Products *"The most critical operational excellence focused challenge affecting my job role right now is end to end Business transformation. Serving our customers is a team sport. Everyone in the value chain needs to understand their impact our ability to win."* VP - Ops/Supply Chain Household and Personal Products   **Industrial Machinery** *"The most critical operational excellence focused challenges affecting my job role right now are ever-changing headcount and personnel continuously changes the dynamics of how our OPEX works effectively. Continuous retraining, and refreshers are necessary to bring new personnel up to pace, and encourage senior personnel to maintain."* Sr. Technical Specialist, Municipal Market Development Industrial Machinery *"The most critical operational excellence focused challenge affecting my job role right now is the support of employees as they think new program won’t improve performance."* Quality Manager Industrial Machinery **Information Technology Services** *"Our primary measure of success for the operational excellence program will be customer satisfaction and swift response to customer demand with the use of less resources."* Chief Operating Officer Information Technology Services *"The most critical operational excellence focused challenge affecting my job role right now is this company's culture would fit nicely about a decade ago. We cannot continue to ask for improvements in technology and support processes and allow for the rest of the company (HR and executive teams) to work under an old power model."* Associate Director - Video Operations Information Technology Services   **Insurance: Life, Health (Mutual)** *"I believe the greatest development in operational excellence in the past 5 years is executing and sustaining is most crucial. The struggle of constantly seeking perfection has not yet been embedded into our everyday thinking."* Supervisor Insurance: Life, Health (Mutual)   **Insurance: Property and Casualty (Stock)** *I see the key drivers pushing change in the operational excellence ecosystem as customer demands are more sophisticated. competitors are adopting and using OPEX to meet customer demands. It's not efficient to conduct OPEX activities in a disjointed, inconsistent manner."* Snr Director, Change Leadership Insurance: Property and Casualty (Stock) [Back to top](https://insights.btoes.com/research-report-2018/19-industry-perspectives?hs_amp=true#BTT) **Internet Services and Retailing** *"The most critical operational excellence focused challenges affecting my job role right now are Lack of Understanding and/or buy in. Leaders know we need it but don't understand what "it" is and how to execute "it"."* Director Business Process: Marketing Internet Services and Retailing   **Medical Devices** *"Our focus for the next 12-18 months in operational excellence will be organizing and developing the engineering function and processes to be more integrated with the rest of the business."* Vice President Operational Excellence Medical Devices *"I see the key drivers pushing change in the operational excellence ecosystem as the Global growth of organizations. Increase in competition globally forcing a need for cost reductions or containment. employees gaining more voice in workplace."* Senior Lean Operations Manager Medical Devices *"The most critical operational excellence focused challenge affecting my job role right now is Lack of skilled workers - sapping capacity due to time taken to train."* Head of R&D Medical Devices   **Mining, Crude-Oil Production** *"Our focus for the next 12-18 months in operational excellence will be much higher expectations of business performance. Moving past 2-3% business improvements to the expectation of a 20-30% improvement in results."* Principal Consultant Mining, Crude-Oil Production **Miscellaneous** *"The most critical operational excellence focused challenge affecting my job role right now is Department relationships. We keep reorganizing and the resulting fallout is a tendency to protect your own turf and not work as closely with others as you could."* Process Line Manager - Mineral Processing Miscellaneous   **Oil and Gas Equipment, Services** *"Our focus for the next 12-18 months in operational excellence will be to establish an effective management system based on work by process and not by tasks."* Quality & Operational Excellence Sr. Manager  Oil and Gas Equipment, Services *"I see the key drivers pushing change in the operational excellence ecosystem as the need for rapid and sustainable results."* Executive Vice President Oil and Gas Equipment, Services   **Pharmaceuticals** *"The most critical operational excellence focused challenge affecting my job role right now is lack of support from employees, because everyone is heads-down to support their client engagements to absorb the philosophy of process-based organizational excellence."* Manager, Performance Improvement Advisory Practice Pharmaceuticals *"The most critical operational excellence focused challenge affecting my job role right now is reconciling competing priorities and agendas remains a top priority. Trying to execute OPEX initiatives without explicitly aligning well intentioned stakeholders with competing agendas makes things difficult."* Client Partner Pharmaceuticals **Publishing, Printing** *"The most critical operational excellence focused challenges affecting my job role right now are maintaining key priorities and monitoring the progress on those priorities is the most crucial for us at the moment. We have problems with focusing on what's crucial and also giving up on things that distract us."* Group Business Transformation Director Publishing, Printing *"The most critical operational excellence focused challenges affecting my job role right now are keeping up' with New technologies - some key basic infrastructure shared globally is severely outdated, disrupts workflow and limits building bridges to new system/technologies."* Director, Operations Emerging Business Models Publishing, Printing   **Real Estate** *"I see the key drivers pushing change in the operational excellence ecosystem as understanding and use throughout the organization as part of the culture and not just being pushed as a ‘project du jour’ by a centralized department."* CEO Real Estate   **Securities** *"Our focus for the next 12-18 months in operational excellence will be establishing a new opeX department, Ramping up RPA program, Driving cultural change, setting up reporting and data analytics."* Senior Development Manager Securities *"The most critical operational excellence focused challenges affecting my job role right now is a failure to innovate: this led to lack of the ability to develop new solutions for our changing customer needs, and inability to sustain our competitive advantage."* Risk Management Officer Securities   **Telecommunications** *"I see the key drivers pushing change in the operational excellence ecosystem as further competitive pressures, disruptions, new product/service development... increased focus on innovation and agile development - e.g. Lean startup."* Director, Sales Transformation & Operations Telecommunications *"The most critical operational excellence focused challenge affecting my job role right now is a Failure to Innovate - still looking at incremental improvements vs transformational ones."* Executive Director Telecommunications   **Toys, Sporting Goods** *"I see the key drivers pushing change in the operational excellence ecosystem as faster delivery of returns. The drive for robotics."* LCI Director Toys, Sporting Goods   **Wholesalers: Electronics and Office Equipment** *"I see the key drivers pushing change in the operational excellence ecosystem as customers are demanding it. We have partners that will fine us if we don't meet certain metrics."* Dir. of Business Transformation Wholesalers: Electronics and Office Equipment     [Back to top](https://insights.btoes.com/research-report-2018/19-industry-perspectives?hs_amp=true#BTT)   **Want to learn more? Download the full Report.** **About the Author** ***Vijay Bajaj,** Founder and CEO of BTOES has founded, built and sold two successful market-leading businesses. The first in London, UK in the office equipment distribution sector, which he launched in 1991 and sold to Ingram Micro in 1999, after which he took a year off and traveled around India with his wife. The second headquartered out of Chicago, IL, in the large-scale commercial B2B conference sector, which was launched in 2001 and sold in 2012.* *In 2012 he retired to spend time with family and focus on meditation.* *In 2015 he was looking for the next challenge and founded and is currently CEO of the Business Transformation & Operational Excellence World Summit & Industry Awards (BTOES), which has become the largest senior-level cross-industry event within the sector, BTOES.com, and BTOESInsights.com a professional online content platform for senior-level executives involved in continuous improvement, which has grown to over 188,000 subscribers.* *He is also an angel investor, mentor, and board advisor.* *Vijay lives in Stanmore, Middlesex, UK, with his wife Reshma, son Armaan, and labrador Archie.* [View full post](https://insights.btoes.com/research-report-2018/19-industry-perspectives) ```json { "@context" : "http://schema.org", "@type" : "BlogPosting", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Vijay Bajaj" }, "dateModified" : "2019-01-06T14:15:04.435Z", "datePublished" : "2019-01-06T14:00:00Z", "headline" : "Industry Perspectives - Research Report 2018/19", "image" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "height" : 368, "url" : "https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/480025/Vijay%20Bajaj%20Keynote%20Email%20Graphic%20.png", "width" : 600 }, "mainEntityOfPage" : "https://insights.btoes.com/research-report-2018/19-industry-perspectives", "publisher" : { "@type" : "Organization", "logo" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "height" : 60, "url" : "/hs/hsstatic/content_shared_assets/static-1.4092/img/default-amp-logo.png", "width" : 60 }, "name" : "BTOES Insights" } } ```