Flevy’s Definitive Guide to Operations

Editor's Note: If you are interested in becoming an expert on Process Improvement, take a look at Flevy's Process Improvement Frameworks offering here. This is a curated collection of best practice frameworks based on the thought leadership of leading consulting firms, academics, and recognized subject matter experts. By learning and applying these concepts, you can you stay ahead of the curve. Full details here.

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This is a guide to navigating Flevy to find the documents and other resources you need related to Business Operations.  “Operations” is a broad, vague term. It can convey a lot of different meanings to different people. If you don’t find what you are looking for in this article, please email us at support@flevy.com.

First, a very brief introduction to Flevy. We are a marketplace for premium business documents. Our documents are of the same caliber as those produced by top tier consulting firms, like McKinsey, Bain, Accenture, BCG, and Deloitte. In fact, we have ex-consultants from all these firms selling on Flevy. Furthermore, most of our documents were developed by seasoned executives and consultants with 20+ years of experience.

We have thousands of documents, so it may appear cumbersome to find exactly the documents you need! To address this issue, we have organized the documents into curated sets of “business toolkits.” Each toolkit consists of a set of training guides (typically in PowerPoint form) that explain how to perform a specific business initiative (e.g. Strategic Sourcing, Process Improvement, Cost Management). In most cases, these are the same frameworks used by consultancies when they deploy their project teams to Fortune 500 clients.

Operations Business Toolkits

Here are several Operations business toolkits:

• Lean Management / Enterprise
• Process Improvement
• Performance Management
• Cost Management
• Change Management
• Strategic Sourcing
• Supply Chain Analysis
• Six Sigma Project
• Project Management
• Strategic Planning
• Balanced Scorecard
• Problem Solving
• Process Analysis & Design
• Post-merger Integration (PMI)

We have over 250+ business toolkits and adding more weekly. Peruse our full inventory here.

Operational Excellence

Operational Excellence is a management philosophy of Leadership, Teamwork, and Problem Solving, resulting in Continuous Improvement throughout the organization by focusing on the needs of the customer, empowering employees, and optimizing existing activities in the process.

We have a large quantity of documents dedicated to Operational Excellence and its closely related methodologies, Lean Management and Six Sigma. If you are interested in learning more about these topics, please start here:

• Operational Excellence Overview
• Lean Management Overview
• Lean Six Sigma Training Guides

We have 3 authors, in particular, who are absolute subject matter experts in this area. Take a look at what they have here:

• Operational Excellence Consulting (Allan Ung)
• Productivity Solutions (Vishnu Rayapeddi)
• Operational Excellence Consulting (Frank Adler)

Flevy (Business) Blog

This blog you’re reading, our corporate blog, is a business magazine focused on Business Strategies, Business Theories, & Business Stories. We seek to publish articles in the same vein as those on Harvard Business Review and the McKinsey Quarterly.

To view all our articles on Operations & Supply Chain, please go here.

Want to Achieve Excellence in Process Improvement?

Gain the knowledge and develop the expertise to become an expert in Process Improvement. Our frameworks are based on the thought leadership of leading consulting firms, academics, and recognized subject matter experts. Click here for full details.

Process Improvement involves analyzing and improving existing business processes in the pursuit of optimized performance. The goals are typically to continuously reduce costs, minimize errors, eliminate waste, improve productivity, and streamline activities.

As we continue to deal with COVID-19 and its economic aftermath, most organizations will prioritize Business Process Improvement initiatives. This is true for a few reasons. First, Process Improvement is one of the most common and effective ways of reducing costs. As the global economy slows down, Cost Management will jump to the forefront of most corporate agendas.

Secondly, a downturn typically unveils ineffective and broken business processes. Organizations that once seemed agile and focused during periods of growth may become sluggish and inefficient when demand drops off.

Lastly, COVID-19 has expedited Digital Transformation for most organizations. One of the quickest and most impactful forms of Digital Transformation is Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Thus, we have included numerous RPA frameworks within this Stream.

Learn about our Process Improvement Best Practice Frameworks here.