409 Posts Found

Some organizations worry that fostering innovation might jeopardize safety by introducing change, which many see as a source of risk. Our results, however, highlight the significance of line ownership: in our experience, one of the most effective bulwarks against accidents is the use of “near miss” programs, which encourage employees to identify hazardous situations and propose solutions before safety is jeopardized. Engaging employees in the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Brooke Weddle, Jean-Benoît Grégoire Rousseau, Randy Lim | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Operations

New automation techniques can provide the first step toward continuous, tech-enabled redesign of critical operations—forming an intuitive ops-to-tech cycle in which tech improves ops, and vice versa.

Content: Article | Authors: Allen Weinberg, David Taylor, Federico Berruti | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Operations

The elements of a good performance-management system are simple, but integrating them into a business’s fundamental operating system is more difficult than it seems.

Content: Article | Authors: Frédéric Gascon, John Douglas, Raffaele Carpi | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Operations

While IoT-enabled advanced analytics could be worth trillions to manufacturers, turning insights into outcomes requires more than just the right technology.

Content: Article | Authors: Mark Patel, Richard Kelly, Subu Narayanan | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Operations

Business needs to raise productivity more than ever. Thanks to innovations in digitization and analytics, four new methodologies can yield the productivity breakthroughs organizations need.

Content: Article | Authors: Kevin Speicher, Mercedes Goenaga, Philipp Radtke, Rafael Westinner | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Operations

Caitlin Kalinowski is a master of the prototyping process, with a deep understanding of where, when and how changes should be slotted in, from the first iteration to the last. It’s made her a highly sought-after engineer in Silicon Valley. In this exclusive interview, Kalinowski discusses how and why you must define your non-negotiables before starting to build prototypes. She dives deep on specific approaches … [ Read more ]

Content: Thought Leader | Author: Caitlin Kalinowski | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Operations | Companies: Apple, Oculus

Attempts to diversify may make supply chain disruptions more damaging when they occur.

Content: Article | Author: Karan Girotra | Source: INSEAD Knowledge | Subject: Operations

Culture eats strategy for breakfast, operational excellence for lunch, and everything else for dinner.

Content: Quotation | Author: Bill Aulet | Subjects: Culture, Operations, Organizational Behavior, Strategy

Humans are extremely creative and flexible. The challenge of course is that sometimes they are tired or angry, and they make mistakes. From a Six Sigma perspective, all humans are considered to be at about a Three Sigma level, meaning that they perform a task with about 93 percent accuracy and 7 percent defects. Autonomation helps human beings perform tasks in a defect-free and safe … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Marc Onetto | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Operations

Some ideas, such as luxury goods and many smartphone apps, are destined for niche markets. Others, like social networks, work at global scale. Explicitly considering the appropriate magnitude and reach of a given idea is important to ensuring that the right resources and risks are involved in pursuing it. The seemingly safer option of scaling up over time can be a death sentence. Resources and … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Erik Roth, Marc de Jong, Nathan Marston | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Innovation, Management, Operations, Strategy

Functional silos almost assure suboptimal outcomes. Most business processes cross functional boundaries. One example is order to cash: sales receives an order, logistics undertakes fulfillment, and finance handles invoicing and cash. Managing a process through separate silos almost guarantees complexity. It creates internal inconsistencies and punishes the customer with foreseeable mistakes. There are exceptions, of course. One is the supply chain, which in many multinational … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Pascal Visée | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Operations, Organizational Behavior

For industrial manufacturers, resources remain a huge financial and managerial cost. A change in perspective can lead to real breakthroughs in reducing resource consumption.

Content: Article | Authors: Ken Somers, Markus Hammer | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Operations

Flexible, adaptive supply chain management is an overlooked but vital component of a company’s overall innovation strategy.

Content: Article | Author: Matt Palmquist | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Innovation, Operations

Amazon’s former head of global operations explains why the company was a natural place to apply lean principles, how they’ve worked in practice, and where the future could lead.

Content: Case Study, Multimedia Content | Author: Marc Onetto | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Operations | Company: Amazon.com Inc.

An ever-growing number of companies continue to discover that de-emphasizing ratings in favor of ongoing quality conversations that support employee development is showing itself to be a viable option. At the NeuroLeadership Institute, we’ve conducted in-depth research with 33 of these 52 companies to find out what really happens when companies remove performance ratings. Here are some of our high-level findings.

Content: Article | Author: David Rock | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Operations

Breaking operations into four parts—problem-solving, daily management, strategic alignment and people development—and fine-tuning them both individually and in concert can help ensure better performance.

Content: Quotation | Source: Chief Executive | Subject: Operations

One oft-cited source of productivity is learning by doing, which is the ability of workers to raise productivity through experience. In fact, economists have credited the Horndal effect to learning by doing. The longer workers do the same type of job the better they get. The result is higher production without having to put in new machines or hire more workers.

Several studies have looked into … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Capital Ideas | Subjects: Economics, Operations

The context for make-or-buy decisions has become more dynamic, as manufacturers face dramatic swings in demand and the relative costs of sourcing locations. To maximize their resilience and value creation, leading manufacturers use a scenario-based approach to assess the implications of a broad array of sourcing decisions simultaneously.

Content: Article | Authors: Claudio Knizek, Daniel Küpper, Daniel Spindelndreier, Michael Zinser | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Management, Operations, Outsourcing / BPO, Strategy

Great performance, whether in customer service or the quality of manufacturing, requires operational excellence. Operational excellence requires a great operational design and great people to carry it out. Neither can make up for the lack of the other.

Content: Quotation | Author: Zeynep Ton | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Customer Related, Human Resources, Management, Operations

Good service rests on a foundation of good operations. But good operations rest on a foundation of skilled and motivated employees.

Content: Quotation | Author: Zeynep Ton | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Customer Related, Human Resources, Management, Operations