35 Operational Strategy Essentials

Welcome to our guide on 35 operational strategy essentials! We’re excited to share some key tips and insights that will help you develop a strong operational strategy for your business. Operational strategy is crucial for the success of any organization, as it involves making decisions about how your company will use its resources, processes and systems to achieve its goals.

One essential aspect of operational strategy is goal setting. It’s important to have a clear understanding of what your organization wants to achieve and how it will measure success. This will guide you in determining the right strategies and tactics to reach those goals.

1. Operational Strategy: A plan to execute business strategy and drive operational performance.

    

2. Business Process Management (BPM): The discipline of improving a business process from end to end by analyzing it, modelling how it works in different scenarios, executing improvements, monitoring the improved process and continually optimizing it.

    

3. Lean Management: A systematic method for the elimination of waste within a manufacturing system.

    

4. Six Sigma: A set of techniques and tools for process improvement.

    

5. Supply Chain Management: The management of the flow of goods and services and includes all processes that transform raw materials into final products.

    

6. Total Quality Management (TQM): A management approach to long-term success through customer satisfaction.

    

7. Just-in-Time (JIT): An inventory management strategy to increase efficiency and decrease waste by receiving goods only as they are needed.

    

8. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): A set of quantifiable measures that a company uses to gauge its performance over time.

    

9. Process Optimization: The discipline of adjusting a process to optimize some specified set of parameters without violating some constraint.

    

10. Capacity Planning: The process of determining the production capacity needed by an organization to meet changing demands for its products.

     

11. Value Stream Mapping: A lean-management method for analyzing the current state and designing a future state for the series of events that take a product or service from its beginning through to the customer.

     

12. Inventory Management: The supervision of non-capitalized assets (inventory) and stock items.

     

13. Operational Efficiency: The capability of a company to deliver products or services to its customers in the most cost-effective manner possible while still ensuring the high quality of its products, service, and support.

     

14. Workflow Analysis: The study of how work moves through an organization.

     

15. Change Management: An approach to transitioning individuals, teams, and organizations to a desired future state.

     

16. Continuous Improvement (Kaizen): A method for identifying opportunities for streamlining work and reducing waste.

     

17. Performance Metrics: Measures of an organization’s activities and performance.

     

18. Resource Allocation: The process of assigning and managing assets in a manner that supports an organization’s strategic goals.

     

19. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs): A set of step-by-step instructions compiled by an organization to help workers carry out complex routine operations.

     

20. Risk Management: The identification, evaluation, and prioritization of risks followed by coordinated and economical application of resources to minimize, monitor, and control the probability or impact of unfortunate events.

     

21. Quality Assurance (QA): A way of preventing mistakes and defects in manufactured products and avoiding problems when delivering solutions or services to customers.

     

22. Scalability: The capability of a system, network, or process to handle a growing amount of work, or its potential to be enlarged to accommodate that growth.

     

23. Process Reengineering: The practice of redesigning business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical aspects like quality, output, cost, service, and speed.

     

24. Demand Forecasting: The art and science of predicting the likely demand for a product or service.

     

25. Strategic Sourcing: An institutional procurement process that continuously improves and re-evaluates the purchasing activities of a company.

     

26. Cycle Time Reduction: A strategy to improve a business process by identifying and eliminating non-value-added activities.

     

27. Outsourcing: The business practice of hiring a party outside a company to perform services and create goods that traditionally were performed in-house by the company’s own employees and staff.

     

28. Benchmarking: Comparing one’s business processes and performance metrics to industry bests or best practices from other companies.

     

29. Operational Excellence: The execution of the business strategy more consistently and reliably than the competition.

     

30. Workforce Management: An institutional process that maximizes performance levels and competency for an organization.

     

31. Project Management: The practice of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria at the specified time.

     

32. Quality Control (QC): A process by which entities review the quality of all factors involved in production.

     

33. Facility Management: A professional management discipline focused upon the efficient and effective delivery of support services for the organizations that it serves.

     

34. Business Continuity Planning (BCP): The process of creating systems of prevention and recovery to deal with potential threats to a company.

     

35. Productivity Analysis: The examination of the efficiency of all the elements involved in the production process.

Understanding these terms is crucial for any individual involved in or aspiring to understand the intricacies of operational strategy in a business context. They cover a broad range of concepts