Operational Excellence: Journey to Creating Sustainable Value

CHAPTER 4THE OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE PROGRAM—OVERVIEW

Operational Excellence is a value- and opportunity-driven master program to fulfill the tactical and operational objectives of the enterprise business/mission strategy. Greatest success and value require establishing the Operational Excellence program as the overall governing program for all improvement initiatives throughout the enterprise. Program objectives, strategy, prioritization, and implementation are led and coordinated through a single, unified governing and administrative structure that includes an enterprise Operational Excellence Steering Team. The Steering Team is chartered to assure all improvement initiatives, including function-specific initiatives, are coordinated and mutually reinforcing to achieve greatest effectiveness and results and deliver maximum value and risk reduction toward business/mission objectives.

The Operational Excellence program transforms principles outlined in previous chapters into practice. Specifically how this is accomplished will be addressed in greater detail in later chapters.

INITIATION

An Operational Excellence program is normally initiated at the top, executive level of an enterprise. Executive level commitment and visible, continuing, enthusiastic drive are absolute essentials to create and sustain the cross-functional teamwork and cooperation that are necessary for success. An enlightened, visionary executive or executives recognize the need for major improvements to assure ...