The ability to implement and maintain improvement initiatives like Lean and Six Sigma is essential for improving quality, eliminating waste, reducing costs, and increasing output—but it’s only the first step. Eventually, the improve-sustain-improve-sustain pattern itself becomes the end product. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Why make operational improvement a perpetual process when you can make business growth a perpetual process?
In this trailblazing book, Kevin Duggan—author of Creating Mixed Model Value Streams and founder of the Institute for Operational Excellence and Duggan Associates—takes you beyond Lean and Six Sigma to achieve true Operational Excellence. By developing a “design for operational excellence” you can leverage the operations side of the business to enable continuous growth.
Design for Operational Excellence provides the design criteria and guidelines that enable you to grow your business organically by refocusing management’s attention from running the business to growing the business. Duggan takes you step by step through the new principles of Operational Excellence:
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Design Lean Value Streams
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Make Lean Value Streams Flow
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Make Flow Visual
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Create Standard Work for Flow
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Make Abnormal Flow Visual
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Create Standard Work for Abnormal Flow
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Have Employees in the Flow Improve the Flow
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Perform Offense Activities
Case studies illustrate how companies that applied Duggan’s methods grew consistently over time by designing and implementing a lean flow of product to the customer. The result was a flow that “self healed” when interruptions occurred, which removed the need to manage flow. These methods work in any business environment, not just manufacturing. Everything from insurance, financial, and banking organizations to hospitals, mining companies, universities, and even government can benefit from the bottom-line and topline business results Duggan’s methodology offers.
Design for Operational Excellence is the next great leap in the evolution of sustained business growth. Begin designing for growth now and stop reacting to customer needs. Instead, position your operation to provide customer solutions in changing markets, which will lead to profit and growth in even the most severe economic and market downturns.
