To less Operational Excellence in the transport industry

New survey of Horváth & Partners Managment Consultants says ‚Operational Excellence‘ is a crucial competitive factor in the transport industry

Given the continued cost pressure, Operational Excellence (OpEx) has become a crucial competitive factor in the transport industry. But companies do not exploit their potentials for OpEx: In all operations units their aspiration level is clearly above the current state of implementation. The most urgent COO task is to align operations activities with the strategy. This is the result of a recent survey by the management consulting Horváth & Partners.

OpEx is the ability to make value added chains always as effective and efficient as possible. The study shows that this has only been possible for some of the transport and logistics companies. „The range of OpEx maturity levels is wide – both in the number of implemented topics, and in terms of intensity, in which the individual topics are dealt with,“ explains Dr. Björn Bohlmann, Head of the Transportation Competence Center at Horváth & Partners.

„OpEx requires a balanced consideration of strategic, structural, economic and human factors in the value chain of companies,“ said study author Ulrich Aldinger. „This results in the four key areas that were considered in the study.“

What comes among the first on the agenda is the COO task of Strategy Alignment. It stands for consistent alignment of all activities to the corporate strategy and involves the strategic factors of value adding. Among them, innovation management and customer management show the biggest gaps between the current degree of implementation and future importance. COOs should start there with the most urgent optimization measures.

The process, organizational and IT management is the second most important task for the respondents. In the transport industry, access to the services offered via online platforms is particularly important. The respondents identified implementation of IT platforms and integration into their services as required, but not yet sufficiently implemented.

The task of performance management, firms identified the management of costs, quality and capacity as the most important levers for operational excellence. In all three areas, they are already working on a high level, but this shall be further increased. Currently, however, the issues in human capital management show the lowest degree of implementation.

Horváth & Partners conducted the survey on „Operational Excellence in the Transportation Industry 2014“ from February to May 2014. Participants are managers of logistics service providers and companies in the rail and aviation industry. They represent the entire range of the German-speaking transport industry.

www.horvath-partners.com

Quelle: LogEastics
Portal: www.logistik-express.com