How operational excellence improves performance
Operational Excellence is about every employee understanding how their actions and processes impact their customers’ mission and business outcomes - both positively and negatively. They use this insight to continuously improve performance by applying concepts of innovation, affordability, and agility at all layers of the customer value stream.
layers of operational excellence
Every organization delivers products and services to their customers by establishing a delivery system. That delivery system has an architecture - either explicit or implicit - which enables the organization to provide unique value to their customers. By understanding that architecture, and applying proven innovation, affordability, and agility concepts to every layer, the organization can outperform the competition while improving the working environment for its employees.
layer 1 - Company infrastructure
Improvements at this layer are not always visible to your customer, but the impact of the improvements will dramatically impact your ability to provide the highest quality products and services and will enable your employees to serve your customers with distinction.
layer 2 - Departments and programs
The actions and decisions you make at this layer enable you to respond with agility to customer and market demands. How you structure your delivery mechanisms and manage your work will be noticed by your customer – even if they do not have visibility into the details.
layer 3 - Products and services
The products and services you offer and deliver to your customers distinguish you in a crowded field. High quality products and services that quickly and efficiently solve your customers’ most challenging problems enable long-term profitable growth.
layer 4 - Customer Business and Mission
Your company exists to provide value to your customers by improving their ability to meet their critical business and mission objectives. This is the most visible layer to your customer and is either enabled or hampered by all the other layers of your delivery architecture. Improvement at this layer requires a deep understanding and intimacy of your customer’s critical needs and is the deciding factor when customers partner with you for long-term, profitable engagements.