A Guide to This Book

This book is intended for managers and employees, in all types of operations and across all branches of industry. The book aims to provide the inspiration and knowledge required to create an effective structure that can lead to sustainable performance improvement and enhanced goal achievement. The structure is equally as important and relevant whether one is working with physical or digital solutions. The book is divided into two parts:

•Part I (chapters 1-7) contains descriptions and explanations of the structure and its constituent parts: values, goals, pulse meetings, and continuous improvement. It explains how each respective part contributes to improved goal achievement. It also explains how to introduce and apply these methods. • Part II (chapters 8-14) contains some examples of practical applications taken from different types of operations in various branches of industry. These examples are intended to provide both general inspiration and more specific tips on how to deal with different conditions. We recommend reading through all the examples, not only the ones most similar to your operation. We can often learn a lot from studying solutions devised by operations that are completely different from our own. The book may contain words and terms that are new to some readers. These will be explained as they are first introduced, but for quick reference, they are also listed in the glossary at the end of the book. You will also find terms that appear in bold type. The intention is to help you find where they are explained. It could be descriptions of terms appearing in a bullet list, a figure, etc. Discussion and reflection boxes appear throughout the book. Their purpose is to prompt you, together with your colleagues, to pause and think about how you can apply what you have just read to your own operation. We encourage you to stop reading when you encounter one of these boxes and allow yourself time to reflect on what your current ways of working look like and how they could be improved. This is usually time well invested.

A Guide to This Book