OpEx/CI Program Design

The Operational Excellence Enterprise Readiness Model (OpEx-ERM) is designed as the framework for a business operating system whose primary objective is to facilitate the achievement of an appropriate state of readiness in a company so that the company becomes able to seize all opportunities and handle threats such that success is as preordained as possible. But having a framework is not enough, because understanding how an operational excellence program is engineered and constructed is one thing, but rolling the program out is quite another…

XONITEK provides consultancy to help you undertake all the necessary steps/phases to successfully put the OpEx-ERM to work, which are outlined followingly:

1. Program Definition and Preparation

“Fascinations breeds preparedness, and preparedness, survival.” —Peter Benchley

This first phase is the most critical phase of the program and requires a considerable amount of time, effort, collaboration, and thought. The future state of the enterprise is wholly dependent on the formation of your definition of success – which deems it hypercritical. If you were to accidentally stumble upon success, would you be able to recognize it? What does it look like?

We provide consultancy that might help you define success. In attempting to form a definition, we can help you answer questions that entail the establishment of a clear vision and determination of strategies through the assessment of the present state. Performing an open, honest, and thorough assessment of the present state establishes the baseline and starting point of your operational excellence program.

Preparation furthermore entails the establishment of deployment tactics, necessary logistics, and precautionary factors to guard you against losing program momentum. And remember, when it comes to operational excellence, it’s all about the people…

Ultimately, no outsider or documented best practices should define what success is for you and your business. But, XONITEK can aid you to form an appropriate definition. Your goals have to be real, they have to be tangible, they have to be understandable, and they have to be realistically achievable.

Through our OpEx-ERM, you will be introduced to the value proposition and concepts of operational excellence, the leadership techniques, and tools necessary for success. As for the final part of the first phase, it is important for your company to realize they are not in the curriculum-development business. In essence, the ERP process creates your company’s curriculum over time. Once you realize this, it’s all systems go…

2. Building capacity

“If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity and capability to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.” —Mahatma Gandhi

We provide an entire ERM system to help you build capacity and capability on your way to becoming a high-performance organization…

Before capacity is built, it is important to redefine the roles and responsibilities of the operational excellence leadership team at the corporate level. The existing corporate team will need to be evaluated to ensure they possess the proper skill sets. For instance, the evaluation might show some members of the existing corporate team are better suited to fulfil other roles.

It is also important that the corporate team not scale in size to form some new corporate bureaucracy; rather, the corporate team should remain nimble, agile, and responsive to the needs of the project teams. Once the corporate team is established in accordance with the resource build-up parameters as established during phase 1, capacity building can begin.

In the OpEx-ERM, the base level of capacity is referred to as foundations and is where trainees learn and incrementally apply a broad range of basic skills and disciplines. By leveraging an integrated learning approach you will build the knowledge in the trainees as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Later, these skills can be further refined and constructed to focus on specific vertical disciplines (organizational smokestacks) within the organization. The levels of indoctrination into the program are.

Foundations Proficient
Foundations Expert
Foundations Competent

At the successful conclusion of phase 2 of the OpEx-ERM, the operational excellence program reaches a logistical level of maturity, which is to say that the program is akin to having implemented a beginner to average continuous improvement or a Lean Six Sigma program. But you can’t stop here…

3. Building Capability

Once a level of capacity is built, it’s time for the next level of achievement. Building capability is meant to improve the employees’ efficiency and effectiveness in using their training and education in foundations as an integrated resource of the enterprise as a whole.

For the purposes of this model, we will organize the functional smokestacks of the business in groups that will closely track to the financial statements with the following:

Balance Sheet, Finance
Profit or Loss Statement, Revenue and Cost of Sales (COS)
Profit or Loss Statement, Cost of Goods Sold (COGS)
Profit or Loss Statement, General and Administrative (G&A)

Then, to ensure the planned waypoints are achieved and the program remains aligned with the strategies of the organization, periodic audits of the operational excellence program are necessary.

At the successful conclusion of phase 3, the operational excellence program will have reached a tactical level of maturity, which is to say that the program is akin to having implemented an above average continuous improvement or Lean Six Sigma program. But again, this is not yet the end…

4. Creating Business Readiness

So far, so good. Our processes and systems within the smokestacks of our business are working in an optimized and balanced fashion, and we continue to realize identifiable improvements. But the main limitation of a traditional continuous improvement program is its emphasis on process optimization and not systems integration and optimization at the enterprise level. The net result is that the activities within functional smokestacks operate largely independently of the activities in other functional smokestacks, leading to a variety of business blunders.

This fourth and final phase of the program deployment is the ultimate value proposition of the OpExERM and is the reason we have successfully performed all the phases prior to this one. Without phase 4, the company will only realize the benefit of a traditional continuous improvement program, albeit a very robust one.

But what is business readiness? Business readiness is having the resources and assets in a proper state of preparedness so that there is an advanced ability to observe and recognize challenges and to rapidly organize and deploy a response to meet those challenges in a meaningful and decisive manner.

In the OpEx-ERM, the level of business readiness your company has attained is defined by three stages of achievement: Bronze, Silver and Gold Standard.

When reaching the final Gold Standard, the company has come to experience some sort of transformational, or even life-threatening, challenge and has engaged the opportunity or threat using all they have learned in their journey to implement their OpEx-ERM…

At the successful conclusion of phase 4 of the OpEx-ERM, the operational excellence program will reach a strategic level of maturity and the company should be a high-performance organization.

Once the OpEx-ERM is thoroughly understood, it is time to examine how the model can be the basis of an enterprise-wide operational excellence program and business operating system that will eventually involve your entire value chain. And once you are on top, you have to fight to remain on top and resist the seduction of complacency, because as the triumphal march in ancient Rome taught us: “All glory is fleeting”

Contact XONITEK today to start your journey towards becoming a High-performance organization with the Operational Excellence Enterprise Readiness Model.

Contact Joseph Paris: ParisJF@xonitek.com