By Drew Algase, CVS, FSAVE – VP Global Affairs, SAVE International
The 19th annual OPEX week was held in Orlando, FL on January 21-26, 2018. OPEX (Operational Excellence) consisted of leaders, users and providers for Business Transformation. Historically, OPEX has evolved from the Six-Sigma Summit to Lean Six-Sigma, to Business Process Management (BPM) to Processes Excellence (PEX) and now to Operational Excellence.
Over the years, I have participated in many of these events to “carry the banner” of VM. This year, the themes I heard included transformation, digitization, intelligent automation (IA), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and customer engagement, to name a few. The focus was on business transformation rather than continuous improvement. And, of course, top down leadership to shape a culture of transformation is essential.
I came away energized by seeing the range of generations represented; not just “boomers”, but many “Gen-Xers” and Millennials. How encouraging to see their enthusiasm to use all the new and improved tools and techniques to drive business transformation. The driver of transformation is to deliver value for the customer. Yes, value; that which the customer needs and is willing to buy at the least overall cost.
When speaking about digitization or intelligent automation, most presenters reminded us to “not automate a bad process”. By that, I inferred that a process had to deliver value to the customer. But, I didn’t hear anything about the Value Methodology as a means by which real value can be identified, specified and delivered.
So, an opportunity for SAVE International is to help promote and advocate for the use of VM as a first step in business transformation. We can educate the operational excellence community about how VM includes customer engagement, emphatic listening, stakeholder participation, data driven decision making and innovation within a facilitated structure.
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