Operational Excellence, Second Edition – Breakthrough Strategies for Improving Customer Experience and Productivity brings together leading-edge tools, methods, and concepts to provide process improvement experts a reference to improve their organization’s quality, productivity, and customer service operations. Its major topics include alignment of strategy to the design of supporting systems to meet customer expectations, manage capacity, and improve performance. It provides a concise and practical reference for operational excellence. Its fourteen chapters lead a reader through the latest tools, methods, and concepts currently used to capture "voice of" customers, partners, and other stakeholders, new strategies for the application of Lean, Six Sigma, as well as product and service design across diverse industries, including manufacturing to financial services. This book operates from three premises:

• Organizations can increase competitiveness in an era of globalization through the application of "voice-of" applications, Design Thinking, the integration of the Information Technology Ecosystem’s new tools and methods integrated with proven Lean and Six Sigma applications
• Operational performance correlates to an organization’s financial, operational, and resultant productivity, as well as with shareholder economic value add (EVA) metrics and can be measured and improved using the methods in this book
• Value-adding activities and disciplines discussed are global and applicable to every organization

A PRACTICAL TOOL FOR REAL-WORLD APPLICATION

New topics are introduced in the second edition. These include Design Thinking, the "voice-of" Information Technology Ecosystems, Big Data applications, and Robotic Process Automation. Key topics from the first edition remain. These include Design-for-Six-Sigma (DFSS), Lean and Six Sigma methods, productivity analysis, operational assessments, project management, and other supporting topics. Each chapter contains tools and methods that will help readers identify areas for operational improvements. It contains ~300 figures, tables, and checklists to help increase organizational productivity. Practical examples are integrated through the book.