The Operational Excellence Assessment (OEA) helps investors to better understand what they are buying and leaders to improve the organizations they are leading.
The expert-guided assessment is suitable for any manufacturing and service companies to determine operational health and maturity level by benchmarking success-critical areas against world-class references. Outcome is a detailed diagnostics report that covers key observations, benchmarking results, and executive summary. The structured assessment provides key input for developing effective transformation programs
Cases, when to use it:
- Inward focus, external perspective is missing
- Operational due diligence, pre-merger analysis
- Improvement attempts failed, feeling stuck
Clients, for whom it is:
- Business leaders (CEO, COO, CFO)
- Investors and business owners
- Anyone looking for “fresh eyes” input
Process, how it works:
- Onsite visit to review the entire business value stream
- Benchmarking exercise to assess the gap to world-class
- Identify strengths and improvement opportunities
- Translate observations and discussions into aligned plans
Benefits, what to gain:
- Expert feedback, how the site compares to world-class
- Benchmarking score, actual maturity on a 5-point scale
- Operational excellence strategy defined and aligned
- Improvement potential quantified, next steps defined
Operational Excellence Assessment: Gaining New Insights from 3 Modules in 3 Days
Day-1: Observing
Walking the process end-to-end together with key stakeholders to identify:
- Current performance levels
- Problems, barriers, losses
- Improvement opportunities
Day-2: Benchmarking
Assessing people, processes, setup, systems to establish the baseline for:
- Benchmarking score
- Maturity profile
- Gap to world-class
Day-3: Concluding
Summarizing findings and developing an improvement plan that covers:
- Highlights and lowlights
- Priorities and focus areas
- Entitlement and next steps
What Is an Operational Assessment?
It is an expert-guided, in-depth review of a manufacturing or service operation, covering the entire value stream, from the identified customer need to its fulfillment. The program consists of three modules: (1) Reviewing current conditions and performance levels, (2) Benchmarking operational health and maturity level, and (3) Concluding the diagnostics by summarizing findings and defining improvement areas.
Who Needs such a Dignostics?
The Operational Assessment provides value for three types of customers: (1) Investors to gain better insights during the pre-merger analysis and due diligence phase, (2) Executives to benchmark their organizations against best-in-class BIC references, and (3) Program leaders to identify improvement opportunities and monitor progression.
How Does It Work?
Together with the local management team, the Leanmap expert performs a Gemba walk (“genchi genbutsu”) to observe workflows, inspect performance records, assess configuration and management systems. Purpose of the Gemba walk is twofold: making key observations to be used as inputs for the value-stream mapping (VSM) exercise and providing on-the-spot coaching feedback. After the tour, the Leanmap experts guides the team through the diagnostics questionnaire to assess maturity level, while identifying quick wins and structural improvement opportunities.
How Long Does It Take?
The entire ‘Quick Scan’ diagnostics takes 3 days to identify actionable insights. For an additional 2 days, we call it ‘Scan+Plan’, we will help the team to translate opportunities into structured improvement plans, calculate business case, define the charter, and create the initial schedule. It ensures that the diagnostics report will not be filed and forgotten, but actually being acted upon to create real value.
Who Participates in the Review?
For effective learning and accurate results, members of the core management team and key contributors should participate in the review, covering all processes and functions in scope of the diagnostics. For a factory assessment, the diagnostics team typically includes representatives from sales, finance, engineering, production, quality, and supply chain. For a service business, the assessment team covers sales, delivery, finance, back-office, and other functions that make up the service value stream. By participating in the review it gives people the chance to provide valuable inputs, align on assumptions, and build on each other’s ideas.
What Outcome to Expect?
The outcome of the diagnostics is a better understanding of current capabilities, performance levels, strengths, and weaknesses. The “Quick Scan” delivers a diagnostics report with benchmarking score, maturity profile, performance barriers, and improvement opportunities. The “Scan+Plan” delivers additionally a detailed improvement plan, allowing the team to act on identified improvement opportunities, starting right after the session.
Manufacturing Operations Assessment
- The Factory Assessment is suitable for all four manufacturing configurations: job shops, batch producers, assembly lines, and continuous flow plants.
- The model work well for all production modes and planning strategies, such as make-to-stock (MTS), assemble-to-order (ATO), make-to-order (MTO), and engineer-to-order (ETO).
Service Operations Assessment
- The Office Assessment is suitable for all four service-operation configurations: service factories, service shops, professional service, and also mass service.
- The model is most commonly used for professional service, service centers, and business functions, such as commercial, engineering, finance, quality, and general management.
Diagnostics Perspective
Outside-In
The assessment helps investors looking from the outside-in to better understand what they are buying; it delivers the critical inputs for making good acquisition decisions and developing effective improvement strategies.
Inside-Out
The assessment helps senior managers looking from the inside-out to conduct a tough-minded, comprehensive review of the business; it delivers the critical inputs for identifying effective improvement levers and key impact areas.
Client Feedback
Agenda for the Operations Diagnostics (3 Days) and Improvement Planning (+2 Days)
"Quick Scan" covers 8 Steps in 3 Days
- Kick-off: reviewing current performance, goals, gaps (1h)
- Go and See: walking along the value stream end-to-end (3h)
- Questionnaire: structured assessment and interviews (3h)
- Debrief: reflecting on results and identifying quick wins (1h)
- Best Practices: understanding gaps and possibilities (2h)
- Gap Analysis: identifying top opportunities, using gap-fit (2h)
- Deep Dives: aligning on baseline, assumptions, levers (2h)
- Conclusions: summarizing highlights, lowlights, priorities (2h)
"Scan & Plan" covers 10 Steps in 5 Days
- Kick-off: reviewing current performance, goals, gaps (1h)
- Go and See: walking along the value stream end-to-end (3h)
- Questionnaire: structured assessment and interviews (3h)
- Debrief: reflecting on results and identifying quick wins (1h)
- Best Practices: understanding gaps and possibilities (2h)
- Gap Analysis: identifying top opportunities, using gap-fit (2h)
- Deep Dives: aligning on baseline, assumptions, levers (2h)
- Conclusions: summarizing highlights, lowlights, priorities (2h)
- Business Case: quantifying cost, benefit, risks, payback (8h)
- Project Charter: developing a formal improvement plan (8h)
Companies Across Industries Use the Operations Diagnostics Tool to Identify Improvement Potentials
Automotive Safety: Audits for Future Factory Design
Lean Operations Diagnostics (LOD) for the largest automotive safety supplier, assessing main manufacturing sites and development centers to deliver critical inputs for the factory-of-the-future design.
Pharma: Lean Audit for Operations Improvement
Lean Operations Diagnostics (LOD) for a European pharma company to assess manufacturing maturity, while identifying improvement potentials for throughput, yield, flexibility, overall factory efficiency (OFE).
Sporting Goods: Operational Due Diligence
Lean Operations Diagnostics (LOD) for private equity as part of the pre-acquisition due diligence program with focus on four European factories to identify value-creation opportunities.