Optimize Your Operation: Stories, Tools and Lessons for Using the Principles of Process Management to Improve Your Quality (The Walkabout Series)

Though the term sounds general, "operational optimization" actually consists of several clearly defined tools that must be used together to be successful. Product and process analysis, mental Division of Labor, and knowledge base building must all be properly applied to yield increased profitability, improvements in product quality, and a more robust knowledge base. OPTIMIZE YOUR OPERATION presents these vital tools using entertaining, easy–to–understand stories that speed the learning process. These stories encompass the lessons that will allow a businessperson to radically improve a department, a division, or an entire company.

From the back cover:

(From Optimize Your Operation, page 19) Newton‘s three principles are the basis for all mechanical physics, studies of motion, and mechanical engineering. Our Principles of Process Management are as essential to improvement as Newton‘s principles were to physics and motion....

The First Principle of Process Management: A fundamental understanding of BOTH the product and process is essential to improvement. Both the product and process must be described and understood individually and separately. The underlying component for improving the product is the process.

The Second Principle of Process Management: Division of Labor is the framework for all aspects of decision making. It must be clearly understood to separate the strategic and tactical decisions. Operations makes the tactical decisions of running the facility. Management makes the strategic decisions of assessing the facility‘s suitability for the job.

The First Principle drives all improvement. The Second Principle is crucial to a clear understanding of the decisions an individual can make. Strategic decisions are decisions in which we use our product and process knowledge to determine a goal and then obtain the means to accomplish that goal. Tactical decisions are made using our product and process knowledge to assure the correct and consistent running of the operation that our strategic decision–makers provided.

About the Author:

James Abbott is a professional engineer and the president of Abbott Associates Incorporated, a process architecture firm based in Greenville, South Carolina. Optimize Your Operation is based on his popular Manager of the Future seminars. His successful lesson within a story approach has helped Fortune 100 companies throughout North and South America to improve their products, increase their profits, and to remain competitive in quickly shifting markets. Mr. Abbott has also written: SPC: Practical Understanding of Capability by Implementing Statistical Process Control, third ed.