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Andreas Jäger/ Procedia CIRP 00 (2014) 000–000 5

superior people-related performance [27]. People are OsE’s ultimate architects, so cultivation of a deep culture where everybody is able to innovate will drive future improvement.

The alignment of managerial decisions, culture establishment, operations resources, competences and capabilities is linked through operations strategy, which forms a central element of the operations enablers.

AD 2a: Vertical fit—Aligning operations enablers with business enablers and results

Vertical fit rests on the premise that coherence between operational performance and overall business strategy takes higher priority than operational performance on its own. Neither excellent operations nor excellent performance can exist unless they fit to the business’s top-level strategies [28]. The business strategy’s plausibility and transparency make or break the success of its deployment top down to the operations and operative process levels. Operations strategy will always be derived from business strategy. In return, operations strategy and activities must have confirmed their bottom-up contribution to and consistency with the business strategy and their linkage to the plant’s overall goals. “Excellence in operations is about how the operations side of the business supports business growth as a strategic part of business.” [30]

The companies’ path towards business growth requires excellence in all activities. According to Dalluege, an organisation’s only route towards excellence is to use stakeholder needs as input for the development and assessment of a strategy and its respective guidelines. Furthermore, organisations should strive to continuously fulfil stakeholder expectations [8]. Consequently, OsE has the ultimate objective of satisfied customers [27]. Every choice made in an organization requires a central focus on the customer; this also applies to operations activities up through operational sub-processes.

This assessment dimension has to judge if “policies, people, products and processes are brought into alignment so that operational expenses go down, profits go up, and companies blossom and prosper” [31]. Balancing the dilemma of gaining best short-term operating results with meeting long-term business objectives, as desired by different stakeholders, should be a particular subject of review.

AD 2b: Vertical fit—Aligning operations enablers with operational processes and results

Based on AD 1 and AD 2a, Operations meets the challenge to configure operational processes across the entire value chain including interactions with clients, suppliers, and further stakeholders by providing an adequate set of enablers. Operations is responsible for stabilization, standardization, and value stream-based optimization of the transformation process from input to output. Therefore, “the limited principle ‘engineering creates, manufacturing makes, and marketing sells’ is obsolete” [26]. The OsE 1.0 framework assists companies to advance beyond the present state of sporadic attention to operations support layers (e.g., maintenance, quality management, administration). The process of new product development gets particular increased significance in

assessing excellence in operations [32]. Westkämper, Alting, Arndt highlight that in the future, not only the manufacturing process and resources themselves, but the whole product life cycle, including life cycle management and assessment, have to be taken as an integral part of engineering [34].

AD 3: Support fit—Aligning technology and innovation with business, operations and process objectives

A key issue in the discussion concerning OsE is the operations’ strong dependence on upstream supporting activity, technology, and innovation management (TIM), that extends beyond the classical product development and production process given in AD 2b. TIM focuses on scouting, forecasting, and strategic development of next-generation technologies and innovations by considering and evaluating different future market and factory scenarios. Currently, cyber-physical-systems, smart factories, real-time data process diagnosis, and condition techniques represent examples that will become increasingly relevant for companies in coming years. TIM’s influence on operations and the reverse are critical factor to achieving OsE. In addition to the demand that technology supports the production process’ efficiency and effectiveness, assessment must identify if TIM, business, and operations enablers work in tandem without conflicts.

5. Case Study and Validation of the Model

In 2013, the OsE 1.0 model’s approach was presented to and analyzed by 15 leading-edge SMEs (7 equipment manufacturers, 8 batch manufacturers) from the machinery and metalware industries. Model validation involved a three-day workshop with the management board, department heads of manufacturing, logistics and R&D as well as shopfloor workers. As first step, a standardized, open-ended interview captured the individual SME`s practical understanding and experience about Operations Excellence in comparison to Operational Excellence. Two conditions, the SME’s desirable ideal position in contrast to the current situation, were respected. Second, IMW introduced the OsE 1.0 framework. The participants discussed systematically the links of the four OsE 1.0 perspectives and classified the importance of result and enabler criteria according to a numerical priority scale. This analysis was critical for the integration or exclusion of criteria to establish the comprehensive but compact framework. Third, the industrial applicability of OsE 1.0 was evaluated by a survey with KPIs, a methodical questionnaire including a best practice benchmark. It was checked if certain enabler criteria, such as procedures or methods, are available and how they correlate with result indicators at SMEs. The empirical research pointed out that SMEs with approx. 100 employees indeed cover several aspects of OsE 1.0, but not completely consistent so far. Smaller SMEs (< 50 employees) only have sporadic implemented examples of Operations Excellence. All participants share the common opinion that the OsE 1.0 framework delivers an adequate basis to devise a detailed assessment for excellence in operations.

One central point of the debates concerned the integration of “technology and innovation management” into OsE. During the discussion, some surprising points and aspects were

6 Andreas Jaeger/ Procedia CIRP 00 (2014) 000–000

brought to the companies’ attention, of which they have previously been unaware, such as the relevance of strategic, systematic, and methodical management of future technology, compared with the operational improvement offered by the present approach of in-house manufacturing technologies themselves.

6. Conclusion

The topic of excellence in operations has increasingly gained researchers’ attention, especially in applied sciences, over recent decades. However, past research activities have relatively over-emphasized the unilateral “result-driven” perspective of OE with limited corresponding concern for enablers, which forms OsE’s focus - a shortcoming this paper attempts to address.

With the design of the OsE 1.0 assessment framework (Figure 4) and the identification of critical root-cause relationships, the first step of Duggan’s demand that excellence in operations should be visually measurable [30] was achieved. Further steps must focus on the detailed composition of the assessment itself. Currently, IMW develops a strictly diagnostic, improvement-oriented evaluation approach. For data collection, two methodologies are focused. A standardized questionnaire serves to determine quantitative facts and an interview is used as qualitative analysis to scrutinize SME’s enablers, results and their cause-and-effect relationships according to Section 4. Therefore, an evaluation scheme with maturity levels will be developed. The SME’s self-reflection and the neutral assessment by IMW will allow to identify company’s weaknesses and to derive prioritized recommendations for SME’s future action.

Finally, it is argued that a general definition cannot be promulgated for the ideal state of excellence in operations. An individual assessment of every single plant is necessary [33]. Thus, the organization must accommodate changes of framework criteria and their interaction in future and recognize that the ability to adapt over time is a key criterion of excellence [28].

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