The Operations Advantage

The study and practice of operations has shifted to reflect the new challenges and uncertainties of how to thrive in today's ever-changing world. The Operations Advantage identifies the most significant challenges to the practice of operations management and gives guidance on how businesses can respond. Leaders need to link the strategic objectives of the business clearly and logically to its operations performance objectives. The book presents a series of ten activities that will help them to do this and therefore make operations work better, such as designing and configuring internal processes and resourcing the operations appropriately. Based on the global teaching, training and consultancy conducted by the author, The Operations Advantage looks at the application of operations management across a range of sectors, including finance, healthcare, professional services, oil and gas industries. Although these diverse sectors require operations practitioners to apply knowledge in different ways, they essentially deal with the same set of processes. The book is an indispensable and unique guide for anyone with an operational role in any organization, as well as operations management students and academics.

This indispensable text offers students a high quality treatment of strategic operations management. It provides the reader with a clear understanding of the importance and nature of operations strategy by determining exactly which management activities, core competencies, resources and technologies underpin an operational strategy. The book demonstrates how various operational elements and components can be combined and customised into unique operational strategies. When these strategies are correctly implemented, they provide sustainable competitive advantage and allow firms to provide a diverse range of services and goods in their increasingly demanding, complex and dynamic marketplaces and spaces. Includes chapters covering customising operational strategies for retail, manufacturing, services and SMEs, and sections on eBusiness and complexity theory in relation to operations theory. Features include: *extended case-studies including several from Europe and the USA *case vignettes *learning objectives *key terms *chapter introduction and 'maps' to aid reader accessibility *'time out' boxes to prompt the reader to reflect on what has been learnt *'critical reflection' boxes that analyse theories and models.

In a world of stiffening competition, business strategy is more crucial than ever. Yet most organizations struggle in this area--not with formulating strategy but with executing it, or putting their strategy into action. Owing to execution failures, companies realize just a fraction of the financial performance promised in their strategic plans. It doesn't have to be that way, maintain Robert Kaplan and David Norton in The Execution Premium. Building on their breakthrough works on strategy-focused organizations, the authors describe a multistage system that enables you to gain measurable benefits from your carefully formulated business strategy. This book shows you how to: Develop an effective strategy--with tools such as SWOT analysis, vision formulation, and strategic change agendas Plan execution of the strategy--through portfolios of strategic initiatives linked to strategy maps and Balanced Scorecards Put your strategy into action--by integrating operational tools such as process dashboards, rolling forecasts, and activity-based costing Test and update your strategy--using carefully designed management meetings to review operational and strategic data Drawing on extensive research and detailed case studies from a broad array of industries, The Execution Premium presents a systematic and proven framework for achieving the financial results promised by your strategy.

Companies in highly regulated industries face unique challenges in optimizing business performance and profitability while maintaining strong governance and regulatory adherence. In this start-to-finish guidebook, leading business performance consultant Hillel Glazer shows how to achieve these goals through the successful integration of lean and systems thinking. Written for operations managers, process professionals, and lean systems managers, Glazer shows how to systematically incorporate compliance into planning for overall performance, value, and profitability, rather than viewing compliance as an end in itself. High Performance Operations will help operations professionals and managers: Clarify the competing interests that challenge them, and implement pre-conditions for success. Learn how a systems-thinking approach can promote achieve operational excellence. Uncover the "secret sauce" that enables great organizations to scale their successes, eliminate single points of failure, and get more of "what went right". Define what value and operational excellence look like in their organizations, and all the costs of achieving them. Create solutions, establish proof-of-performance, justify investments, measure performance, and implement continuous improvement. Translate solutions into working policies, patterns, processes, and procedures.

Obtaining a competitive advantage in today’s business environment generally does not happen of its own accord. With the speed of global economic change, products to market, technology and customer preferences, organizations must light on their feet and be the drivers of change. Given that most businesses deal with the same buyers in defined markets who purchase similar products, gaining this competitive advantage is critical to both thriving and being leaders in their field. To do this, one must drive efficiencies throughout the entire organization while creating a significant point of difference. Yet, inefficiency continues to run rampant and can be found in the often-forgotten pockets of the organization, hampering efficacy at best, leading it out the door at worst. How Efficiency Changes the Game: Developing Lean Operations for Competitive Advantage provides an insightful process for the executive, manager, and business owner, enabling them to discover inefficiencies where least expected, highlighting both the nature of the primary issues and then how to subsequently correct them. This book will assist in developing lean operations in areas such as leadership, marketing, strategy and planning, sales, time management, workflows, finances, and people.

Publisher's Note: Products purchased from Third Party sellers are not guaranteed by the publisher for quality, authenticity, or access to any online entitlements included with the product. This book brings together a winning team of international operations experts to set the framework for building a world-class manufacturing organization. Pharmaceutical Operations Management focuses on key concepts such as: Policy Execution, Risk Management, Supply chain modeling, Advance process control and Six Sigma for the pharmaceutical industry: critical techniques which will offset cost, increase efficiency and turn any manufacture into financial winner.

Aims to promote a more competitive edge in various aspects of the manufacturing process by explaining their contribution to performance in terms of productivity, quality, delivery and flexibility. The book examines the importance of the manufacturing/marketing interface.

There is a competitive advantage out there, arguably more powerful than any other. Is it superior strategy? Faster innovation? Smarter employees? No, New York Times best-selling author, Patrick Lencioni, argues that the seminal difference between successful companies and mediocre ones has little to do with what they know and how smart they are and more to do with how healthy they are. In this book, Lencioni brings together his vast experience and many of the themes cultivated in his other best-selling books and delivers a first: a cohesive and comprehensive exploration of the unique advantage organizational health provides. Simply put, an organization is healthy when it is whole, consistent and complete, when its management, operations and culture are unified. Healthy organizations outperform their counterparts, are free of politics and confusion and provide an environment where star performers never want to leave. Lencioni’s first non-fiction book provides leaders with a groundbreaking, approachable model for achieving organizational health—complete with stories, tips and anecdotes from his experiences consulting to some of the nation’s leading organizations. In this age of informational ubiquity and nano-second change, it is no longer enough to build a competitive advantage based on intelligence alone. The Advantage provides a foundational construct for conducting business in a new way—one that maximizes human potential and aligns the organization around a common set of principles.