Operational Excellence
What is Operational Excellence?
Treacy & Wiersema’s value discipline of delivering a reliable, convenient offer at a competitive total cost through standardized, efficient operations. Porter’s cost leadership is a related cost-position strategy; operational excellence also emphasizes dependable delivery and ease of doing business.
How Operational Excellence works
Requires a high-volume, standardized product, relentless process improvement, and the willingness to forgo features that raise cost. Tends to earn Scale economies and Process power.
Case studies tagged with Operational Excellence
Each link opens the passage tagged with this concept.
The question to ask of a company
What did the company implement, for whom, against which alternative, and how was this approach intended to change customer value or economics? Standardized operations support a deliberate promise of dependable value at competitive total cost.
Examples
- AWS, Walmart, Vanguard, Ryanair, Amazon retail.
Who names it — 2 of the canon
| Author | What they call it / where it appears |
|---|---|
| Porter | Cost leadership |
| Treacy & Wiersema | Operational excellence |
Note. Choose the leading discipline for the specific business and meet acceptable standards in the other two. Examine staffing, measures and resource allocation for evidence of that commitment.