The Path to Operational Excellence

In my last post I cleared the confusion about what operational excellence is. I also described a pathway that leads to achieving it. If you like, I cleared the cloud from the mountain top and described a path to the top. I was thinking about the issue further and I can unpack it further. As it were, clear the path to the mountain top and install handrails for extra assistance!

I described in my earlier post that the development of a quality system to satisfy the requirements of ISO9001 unlocks the path to operational excellence for your business. Easy to say, but how can this be? One of the strategies required by ISO9001, actually the one that stands it apart from all the other improvement strategies (TQC, TQM, the various Quality Awards, Lean, Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma, etc), is internal audit. Internal audit is not a mystery, or something to be afraid of, or scoff at. Internal audit, more than anything else, holds the key to improvement over the long term. How is this, I hear you ask?

It’s easy to dismiss internal audit as just another check of compliance. But internal audit shouldn’t be focussed on compliance. This is the role of the Third Party audits carried out by your certifier. The Certifier is the expert on ISO9001 compliance, so why not leave this to them. Internal audits should be focussed on achieving operational excellence. What can the organisation do better. The internal audit team works in the company every day, and should have a very clear idea of what needs to be improved, and also of the intricacies of what impacts on what and whose work impacts on who. The internal audit team is the expert (or at least should be) on operational matters in the company, and this is why their internal audit work is the key to operational excellence.

By conducting internal audits to focus on operational excellence the organisation gains maximum benefit. Also, my experience is that the third party auditors respect this approach and work to complement it. I said in my previous post that achieving excellence takes time. That is because the internal auditors identify issues which can be improved during audit and then the company works to resolve them. At the next set of audits further improvements, sometimes not visible or practical to resolve before the first issue was resolved, will be seen. This process goes on and on for years, with the organisation sharpening their operation step by step. This process never ends – you’ll always find something in the system which (economically) could be made better. If you think not, can I suggest that you look harder, or from another direction.

This also is a beautiful process. Managed appropriately, improvement takes place in a prioritised fashion in the way that best suits the organisation. Rather than imposing something from outside the organisation, such as many of the other improvement strategies do, the improvement comes directly from agreed actual organisational needs. The audit team (auditor and auditee), operational staff, area management and senior management work together to identify and resolve an agreed prioritisation of agreed well-defined and clearly identified improvement needs. Everything is identified and resolved at the optimal time. Everyone wins. Powerful stuff!

Management review of the system is another unique requirement of ISO9001. This management review builds on the improvement priorities established during internal audit and appropriately involves executive management in what’s happening. Once again, powerful stuff, and another clearly defined facilitator of operational excellence.

You’d probably be aware that a continuous improvement strategy has been “formally” required by ISO9001 since 2000. The consequence of this is that any other continuous improvement strategy employed by the organisation is actually a sub-set of the suite of strategies assembled as the organisation’s ISO9001 quality management system. Consequently, ISO9001 compliance is the master operational excellence strategy.

This material, and the one I published a couple of days ago, work together to show you how straightforward the concept of operational excellence really is. I’m not saying that it’s easy, a quick fix, or simple to implement. In fact it might even look like an insurmountable task. However, the route to operational excellence is a clearly defined process that can be achieved in any well-managed organisation, step by step, using the path I’ve described. As the saying goes, every journey begins with the first step.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve found unpacking this operational excellence concept exciting. An adventure awaits us all!