The Operations Advantage
The Operations Advantage

Author: Nigel Slack

Publisher: Kogan Page Publishers

Published: 2017-04-03

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 074947355X

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The study and practice of operations has shifted to reflect the new challenges and uncertainties of how to thrive in today's ever-changing world. The Operations Advantage identifies the most significant challenges to the practice of operations management and gives guidance on how businesses can respond. Leaders need to link the strategic objectives of the business clearly and logically to its operations performance objectives. The book presents a series of ten activities that will help them to do this and therefore make operations work better, such as designing and configuring internal processes and resourcing the operations appropriately. Based on the global teaching, training and consultancy conducted by the author, The Operations Advantage looks at the application of operations management across a range of sectors, including finance, healthcare, professional services, oil and gas industries. Although these diverse sectors require operations practitioners to apply knowledge in different ways, they essentially deal with the same set of processes. The book is an indispensable and unique guide for anyone with an operational role in any organization, as well as operations management students and academics.

High Performance Operations
High Performance Operations

Author: Hillel Glazer

Publisher: Pearson Education

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 0132779889

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Companies in highly regulated industries face unique challenges in optimizing business performance and profitability while maintaining strong governance and strict regulatory adherence. In High Performance Operations, leading business performance consultant Hillel Glazer shows how to achieve these goals through the successful integration of lean- and systems thinking. Writing for a broad audience of operations and governance executives, Glazer shows how to systematically incorporate compliance into planning for overall performance, value, and profitability, rather than viewing compliance practices as an end in itself. Glazer helps you discover and implement the pre-conditions for success! uncover the secret sauce that helps you scale their successes, eliminate single points of failure, and get more of what went right! define what value and operational excellence look like in your company, and identify the costs you'll have to pay to achieve them! create solutions, establish proof-of-performance, justify investments, measure performance, and implement continuous improvement! translate solutions into working policies, patterns, processes, and procedures.Using this book's proven techniques, you can build your company into the best place to work, the best value to your customers and the best source of return to your stakeholders. An indispensable resource for all operations managers, compliance teams, process control managers, and other decision-makers in regulated industries such as healthcare, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, IT, finance, and environmental services.

Strategic Operations Management
Strategic Operations Management

Author: Robert H. Lowson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2003-08-29

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 1134519028

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This text combines four themes: strategy, services, innovation and management of relationships, both in the supply chain and with other players. Mini case studies are used to supplement the text.

The Advantage
The Advantage

Author: Patrick M. Lencioni

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2012-03-14

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 1118266102

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There is a competitive advantage out there, arguably more powerful than any other. Is it superior strategy? Faster innovation? Smarter employees? No, New York Times best-selling author, Patrick Lencioni, argues that the seminal difference between successful companies and mediocre ones has little to do with what they know and how smart they are and more to do with how healthy they are. In this book, Lencioni brings together his vast experience and many of the themes cultivated in his other best-selling books and delivers a first: a cohesive and comprehensive exploration of the unique advantage organizational health provides. Simply put, an organization is healthy when it is whole, consistent and complete, when its management, operations and culture are unified. Healthy organizations outperform their counterparts, are free of politics and confusion and provide an environment where star performers never want to leave. Lencioni’s first non-fiction book provides leaders with a groundbreaking, approachable model for achieving organizational health—complete with stories, tips and anecdotes from his experiences consulting to some of the nation’s leading organizations. In this age of informational ubiquity and nano-second change, it is no longer enough to build a competitive advantage based on intelligence alone. The Advantage provides a foundational construct for conducting business in a new way—one that maximizes human potential and aligns the organization around a common set of principles.

The Execution Premium
The Execution Premium

Author: Robert S. Kaplan

Publisher: Harvard Business Press

Published: 2008-08-04

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1422163636

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In a world of stiffening competition, business strategy is more crucial than ever. Yet most organizations struggle in this area--not with formulating strategy but with executing it, or putting their strategy into action. Owing to execution failures, companies realize just a fraction of the financial performance promised in their strategic plans. It doesn't have to be that way, maintain Robert Kaplan and David Norton in The Execution Premium. Building on their breakthrough works on strategy-focused organizations, the authors describe a multistage system that enables you to gain measurable benefits from your carefully formulated business strategy. This book shows you how to: Develop an effective strategy--with tools such as SWOT analysis, vision formulation, and strategic change agendas Plan execution of the strategy--through portfolios of strategic initiatives linked to strategy maps and Balanced Scorecards Put your strategy into action--by integrating operational tools such as process dashboards, rolling forecasts, and activity-based costing Test and update your strategy--using carefully designed management meetings to review operational and strategic data Drawing on extensive research and detailed case studies from a broad array of industries, The Execution Premium presents a systematic and proven framework for achieving the financial results promised by your strategy.

The Admirals' Advantage
The Admirals' Advantage

Author: Christopher Ford

Publisher: Naval Institute Press

Published: 2014-04-15

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 1612513301

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Operational intelligence, knowledge of the enemy’s location and actions, is crucial to effective military operations. The Admirals’ Advantage offers a revealing look at naval operational intelligence based on the findings of a classified Operational Intelligence (OPINTEL) Lessons-Learned Project and a 1998 Symposium at the Navy and Marine Corps Intelligence Training Center. Participants included senior intelligence and operational leaders who explored the evolution and significance of OPINTEL since World War II. Past and current practices were examined with inputs from fleet and shore commands and insights from interviews and correspondence with senior flag officers and intelligence professionals.

How Efficiency Changes the Game
How Efficiency Changes the Game

Author: Ray Hodge

Publisher: Business Expert Press

Published: 2021-05-11

Total Pages: 139

ISBN-13: 1637420455

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Obtaining a competitive advantage in today’s business environment generally does not happen of its own accord. With the speed of global economic change, products to market, technology and customer preferences, organizations must light on their feet and be the drivers of change. Given that most businesses deal with the same buyers in defined markets who purchase similar products, gaining this competitive advantage is critical to both thriving and being leaders in their field. To do this, one must drive efficiencies throughout the entire organization while creating a significant point of difference. Yet, inefficiency continues to run rampant and can be found in the often-forgotten pockets of the organization, hampering efficacy at best, leading it out the door at worst. How Efficiency Changes the Game: Developing Lean Operations for Competitive Advantage provides an insightful process for the executive, manager, and business owner, enabling them to discover inefficiencies where least expected, highlighting both the nature of the primary issues and then how to subsequently correct them. This book will assist in developing lean operations in areas such as leadership, marketing, strategy and planning, sales, time management, workflows, finances, and people.

The Essential Advantage
The Essential Advantage

Author: Paul Leinwand

Publisher: Harvard Business Press

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1422136515

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Conventional wisdom on strategy is no longer a reliable guide. In Essential Advantage, Booz & Company's Cesare Mainardi and Paul Leinwand maintain that success in any market accrues to firms with coherence: a tight match between their strategic direction and the capabilities that make them unique. Achieving this clarity takes a sharpness of focus that only exceptional companies have mastered. This book helps you identify your firm's blend of strategic direction and distinctive capabilities that give it the "right to win" in its chosen markets. Based on extensive research and filled with company examples--including Amazon.com, Johnson & Johnson, Tata Sons, and Procter & Gamble--Essential Advantage helps you construct a coherent company in which the pieces reinforce each other instead of working at cross-purposes. The authors reveal: · Why you should focus on a system of a few aligned capabilities · How to identify the "way to play" in your market · How to design a strategy for well-modulated growth · How to align a portfolio of businesses behind your capability system · How your strategy clarifies growth, costs, and people decisions Few companies achieve a capability-driven "right to win" in their market. This book helps you position your firm to be among them.

The Content Advantage (Clout 2.0)
The Content Advantage (Clout 2.0)

Author: Colleen Jones

Publisher: New Riders

Published: 2018-07-11

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 0135159520

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In The Content Advantage (Clout 2.0): The Science of Succeeding at Digital Business Through Effective Content, expert Colleen Jones argues that in the age of digital disruption, your company faces an important choice. The choice is not whether to do content. Every business function–from marketing to sales and from support to recruiting–demands content. The choice is whether to make your approach to content strategic and, consequently, an advantage. This book, which is the second edition of the pioneering content book Clout, offers a modernized and comprehensive approach for planning, creating, delivering, and optimizing content that will make your business thrive. Executives and practitioners alike will find value in this book as they face increasing pressure to deliver the right content to the right customers at the right time. Drawing on her in-the-trenches experience with organizations ranging from the Fortune 50 to small and medium businesses to government and nonprofits, Jones offers: Guidance on creating a content vision A primer on conducting content analysis Techniques for developing a competitive content strategy Elements and principles of effective, influential content A blueprint for developing content intelligence A maturity model for content operations Examples from diverse companies and contexts

The Keystone Advantage
The Keystone Advantage

Author: Marco Iansiti

Publisher: Harvard Business Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 9781591393078

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Today, many companies operate within a complex network of firms that all depend on each other for success. In this book, authors Marco Iansiti and Roy Levien use the powerful example of biological ecosystems to show how companies can leverage these emerging business networks for long-term success. The book's title, "The Keystone Advantage", is taken directly from biology - it refers to "keystone species", which proactively maintain the healthy functioning of their entire ecosystem for a simple reason: their own survival depends on it. In the same way, say the authors, companies can protect and ensure their own success by deliberately fostering the combined health of the network they operate in.