Operational Excellence
Operational Excellence: Increased Efficiency Through Strong Management Governance
Defining strategic business goals can be challenging; however, the ultimate challenge is placing theses effective strategies in practice. This is exactly where we have been supporting companies for many years with operational excellence, an approach that permanently aligns operations to be effective.
We understand operational excellence as a continuous process that transforms your strategic goals into predictable, cost-efficient results and secures the long-term viability of your productivity. Importantly, increasing efficiency must be a shared responsibility across the entire organization, supported by leadership that is clearly committed to operational excellence.
What is operational excellence (OpEx)?
Operational excellence is a strategic management approach that consistently aligns a company's structures, processes, controls, leadership, and digitization with its corporate strategy. It aims to achieve economically sustainable production that focuses not only on reducing costs, but also on a holistic approach to efficiency and quality across the entire value chain.
Why Operational Excellence Incorporates More Than Just Lean Management Processes
Operational excellence is a holistic management approach that directly links corporate strategy with operational execution. This approach increases efficiency, quality assurance, and innovation capability as a unit that must extend all the way to the shop floor. Lean management is an embedded aspect of operational excellence and an effective tool for eliminating waste.
The reason why operational excellence goes beyond individual methods is because it is never present on only one level. Effective change targets both the technical production level and the organization, leadership, and management systems. A robust method only becomes a viable system when these levels work together.
Operational excellence orchestrates lean management processes, clear control logic, and consistent project management as key tools. It facilitates transparency and control loops that ensure reliable project success.
People excellence is another lever. Sustainable operational excellence requires a culture of continuous improvement (CIP) and leaders who actively empower their teams. Consistent cultural embedding throughout the entire organization is crucial. Employees recognize their effective contribution to improving their area and independently implement efficiency improvements. As a consequence, continuous improvement becomes a shared stance, interconnected across all areas.
To succeed in operational excellence transformation, a structured transformation management approach is required that not only improves processes but also integrates them into the corporate culture. The following approach shows how we proceed.
Achieve Operational Excellence: Increase Productivity Through Optimized Corporate Management
The starting point for any kind of sustainable change is understanding the cause and effect. To identify the actual drivers of performance and losses in your production, we analyze your production system on two levels: on the shop floor, where value is created, and in the organization, where it is operationally controlled.
One special feature of our production check is the consistent outside-in perspective. We use systematic benchmarking to classify your operational performance within the competitive environment and reveal where your company stands and which potential has remained untapped. This perspective gives you a fact-based basis for decision-making and shows exactly which measures offer the greatest leverage for your company.
The digitization of your shop floor processes serves two purposes in our approach, both as an enabler for objective analysis and benchmarking and for implementation, where we align your internal systems and data structures with the objectives of your operational excellence strategy.
The order is crucial. The operations strategy must come before digitization, not the other way around.
The systems created are not isolated standalone solutions, but systems that are designed to control your company.
Operational Excellence: Five Performance Areas That Reduce Costs in The Company and Increase Your Profitability
The following performance areas of operational excellence have the biggest impact when combined but can also be optimized individually. Whether you want to holistically enhance the operational excellence of your company or specifically strengthen individual areas such as performance management, Ingenics Consulting is the right partner for you.
This is how we improve the effectiveness of your shop floor and the quality of your production:
Business Performance: Operational Excellence in Numbers
Typical results from our completed operational excellence consulting:
Operational excellence not only improves individual processes, but also the efficiency of your entire production system. The results are reflected in measurable KPIs and have a lasting impact on productivity and your company’s competitiveness.
- Productivity improvement: > 15 %
- Lead time reduced: Approx. 30 %
- OEE increase: 5-15 %
- Greater transparency and better decision quality
- Improved leadership effectiveness and more stable processes
- Comprehensive support for the organization
These improvements result from the interaction between the performance areas and consistent alignment with the corporate strategy.
Why You Should Choose Ingenics Consulting:
Your Long-Term Partner for Operational Excellence
To achieve operational excellence, you need a partner who can manage strategy and the shop floor effectively in equal measures. And this is exactly where Ingenics Consulting plays out its strengths. As a vendor-neutral partner with over 45 years of experience, we combine in-depth industrial and production expertise with proven implementation strength.
We bring experience from numerous successfully implemented OpEx projects and their business cases. You will benefit directly from our extensive experience, enabling quicker insights, more informed decisions, and measurable improvements across your company.
Further Information
Operations Strategy
How your corporate strategy can provide a viable target vision for your operations.
Digital Production & New Technologies
How digital technologies become enablers for transparency, control, and effectiveness.
FAQ - Frequent Questions About Operational Excellence
How does operational excellence differ from traditional lean management?
Lean management processes focus primarily on eliminating waste. Operational excellence is an overarching holistic management approach that directly links corporate strategy with operational execution, and integrates leadership, organization, and digitization. It is not only aimed at increasing efficiency, but also at securing a lasting competitive advantage.
Which KPIs make it possible to measure the success of operational excellence?
The main focal points include increasing productivity, reducing lead times, safeguarding delivery capability, optimizing cost and inventory KPIs, and improving overall equipment efficiency (OEE). Evaluation and monitoring require a reliable database in the shop floor management system that can identify variances early on and engineer courses of action based on reliable figures.
Why do so many operational excellence strategies fail even though the correct methodology is applied?
The greatest risk is overlooking the people side of operational excellence. Without a culture of continuous improvement and without capable leaders, operational excellence remains a theoretical concept. A sustainable impact requires a shift in leadership roles, from problem-solving to empowering teams to ensure that processes remain stable and personal responsibility is always assumed.
What role does digitization have in operational excellence
Digitization is a key enabler for objective analysis as well as for implementation. Networked systems replace manual data collection with reliable real-time information and enable faster responses in the event of variances.
How does operational excellence contribute to cost optimization in the short term?
In the short term, operational excellence works by identifying and eliminating activities that do not add value and reduce overheads. It can reduce operational costs without jeopardizing quality assurance or innovation capability, which stabilizes the quality of results while simultaneously increasing the resilience of the company.