Customer-Driven Operations Management: Aligning Business Processes and Quality Tools to Create Operational Effectiveness in Your Company

The global economy is witnessing previously unseen levels of competitiveness, forcing business leaders to contend with unprecedented challenges. No longer can companies seize and hold a customer base by operating adequately. In order to enjoy a competitive advantage, an organization must operate at exemplary levels of performance in every facet of business and maintain that degree of excellence indefinitely. This is achieved through careful alignment of operational systems and the use of innovative process management initiatives. “Unless an organization is uniquely qualified to deal with its customers by understanding its own strengths and weakness,” writes internationally renowned operational management expert Christopher K. Ahoy, “it will be unable to understand what is required to move from the current paradigm of doing business.”

In Customer-Driven Operations Management, Ahoy distills the most current business theories and practices that will help you weed out and eliminate operational inefficiencies and put in place the necessary metrics for providing products and services better, cheaper, and faster than ever. Ahoy walks you through the steps of creating a world-class organization, which include

• Mapping your company's processes to target weak points
• Realigning management systems from functional to process-focused
• Setting benchmarks throughout the process to help quantify levels of success
• Establish a system of knowledge management for the seamless alignment of teams and departments
• Improving process management using Lean, Six Sigma, and other methodologies
• Create a sound strategic planning initiative to eliminate future surprises

With diagrams and figures to highlight salient points, Customer-Driven Operations Management clarifies and simplifies the otherwise daunting task of enacting major changes in your company's operations systems.

Christopher K. Ahoy is associate vice president for Facilities Planning and Management at Iowa State University. An internationally recognized expert on quality initiatives, he is responsible for having his organization become a three-time recipient of the state of Iowa’s annual Iowa Recognition for Performance Excellence Silver Achievement award.