Boosting Operational Excellence in Logistics

Continuous improvement, efficiency, positive and empowered employees, commitment to quality, innovativeness and meeting customer expectations are some of the words describing operational excellence. It has a different meaning in every organization, but the most important of its aspects is realizing how the chain of activities inside an organization influences on the value that they bring to the customer. Operational excellence focuses on the development of business operations and the related activities. In a larger context, it is a driver of economic growth. Given the nature of the research objective, a qualitative research approach and a multi-method case study were selected for the study. In addition, in order to gain a deeper understanding of the case company’s value chain, a documentary analysis was conducted, and certain key employees were interviewed. McKinsey’s 7-S framework were used as the theoretical framework for the research. The research results showed that the main challenges in gaining operational excellence were related to very traditional problems in organizations: unclear processes and responsibilities, inaccurate demand planning and ever-changing customer needs, communication between internal and external customers and keeping up with the new technologies. The research also revealed that when everyone in the organization shares the organization’s values, it’s possible to succeed although strategic targets are not clear. Based on the study, several development ideas were proposed, such as creating standard work flows charts, crystallizing the responsibilities, visualizing the process areas to identify how they could proceed, enhancing communication, creating operational excellence management system and creating a culture of operational excellence inside the organization. Following suggestions for future research was given: how the digitalization can drive operational excellence, how the monitoring influences on operational excellence and what pros and cons it may have and how the organizational changes influence to operational excellence