operations management

Operations management

We innovate and transform our clients’ operations towards leading performance excellence across the total range of industry and service sectors.  We help you to excel in operational practices, from lean and agile to digitally enabled operations, and ensure measureable and lasting operational and financial performance – from quality and speed to cost and capital efficiency. 

    At Arthur D. Little, we innovate and transform our clients’ operations towards leading performance excellence across the total range of industry and service sectors. We help you to excel in operational practices, from lean and agile to digitally enabled operations, and ensure measureable and lasting operational and financial performance – from quality and speed to cost and capital efficiency. 

    Operations management services: 

    Future of operations (Industry 4.0)

    Operational integration of digital technologies to drive radical performance improvement

    Arthur D. Little helps clients to successfully plan, implement and maintain Industry 4.0 applications to reshape operations towards full digitalization. We navigate you through the technological and methodological complexity and help to boost operational performance.

    Industry 4.0 and digitalization are drivers for change and new opportunities at the same time. Key challenges ahead of several industries are both the borderless integration of value chains and the integrated use of existing and emerging new technologies.

    Understanding the implication of Industry 4.0 on all layers of operational processes is the key to anticipating potential disruptions, as well as opportunities to exploit them successfully.

    We help our clients with technology-driven solution approaches, over 500 use cases for value-generating applications, and standardized cost models based on benchmarks and our industry expertise.

    We assess technologies, their most efficient way of application and their cost to your operations, and then plan the implementation and assist you in transforming your operations successfully.

     

      Total company performance

      Boost your company performance with a holistic view across the full value chain

      We help clients to improve their total company performance by transforming their organizations towards bottom-line optimization and best-practice orientation throughout the entire value chain. 
      We thereby apply leading operational and organizational practices, with full understanding of cross-value-chain dependencies and complexity drivers. 

      We offer clients customized solutions, such as:

      • Identifying improvement levers to achieve operational excellence in a 360-degree audit, with combined “inside-out” and “outside-in” perspectives
      • Radically simplifying your operating model, focusing on paradigm shifts in structure, technology landscape, product portfolio, market approach, corporate logic and ways of operation
      • Streamlining your organization by establishing and operationalizing lean and six-sigma practices 
      • Leveraging agility principles, enabling your organization to adapt flexibly and quickly to market changes
      • Boosting cost, quality and/or working capital levels with a holistic view across your full operations

      Supply chain management

      Making your supply chain lean and agile to respond effectively and efficiently to an increasingly volatile and complex business environment

      We help clients to ensure every part of the supply chain is seamlessly joined and quickly adaptive.

      We help you to restructure the supply chain network, optimize the asset base and apply innovative solutions in line with your business strategy, to achieve high supply chain responsiveness and optimal operating costs across the entire value chain and over all functional areas. 

      We offer clients customized solutions such as:

      • Identifying improvement levers to achieve supply chain performance excellence in a 360-degree audit with combined “inside-out” and “outside-in” perspectives
      • Achieving higher responsiveness and more efficient supply chain management through integrated sales & operations planning processes and organizations
      • Innovating and transforming your order fulfillment to be customer focused, high performing and cost efficient
      • Applying digital technologies to your supply chain by implementing big-data analytics, digital interfacing and digital integration throughout the entire supply chain

       

        Procurement & sourcing

        Transforming procurement into an agile, linked innovation leader and catalyst

        We help clients to achieve procurement value excellence. We enable your procurement organization to generate value, drive supplier-enabled innovation and manage increasingly complex supplier networks. 

        We offer clients customized solutions, such as:

        • Transforming your procurement towards being strategic- and value-sourcing focused, generating significant savings in procurement cost, leveraging all potential for value creation and innovation, and ensuring sustainability by the right procurement strategy, organization and processes
        • Building and managing high-performing supplier management from supplier portfolio management, over supplier assessment and development, to supplier integration
        • Transforming procurement organizations towards digitalization – for internal processes as well as to cope with digitalization of the businesses they serve 
        • Rethinking the sourcing model and existing outsourcing relationships to adjust them to the strategic needs of the business

         

          Production & logistics

          Transformation to an agile, connected production system to meet the challenges of tomorrow

          We help clients to deliver breakthrough improvements of productivity, delivery performance and time to market in production, logistics and production and logistics networks. 

          We offer clients customized solutions, such as:

          • Reviewing your current production & logistics network design, assessing structural options and performance of plants and warehouses, and transforming to the new set-up
          • Transforming your production to a high-performing and lean organization with increased overall equipment-efficiency-boosting productivity
          • Increasing your logistics delivery precision while reducing lead times, inventory & costs through implementation of improved logistics processes, organization, tools & systems 
          • Transforming your production to a “digital factory” with integrated and connected machines to increase transparency, flexibility and efficiency of production

           

            Assets & capital projects

            Fulfilling the strategic goals of asset-intensive organizations

            We help clients to develop tailored infrastructure asset management solutions according to the TOTEX principles, to achieve sustainable gains in free cash flow while achieving improved service quality. 

            We offer clients customized solutions, such as:

            • Enabling your organization to decrease operational costs, improve service quality and move to more advanced maintenance methods within asset life-cycle management 
            • Designing efficient asset investment programs to ensure targeted investment spending in line with the condition of the asset base and asset management strategy 
            • Streamlining the investment realization process with the aim to realize investments on time and on budget, and thus meet investment-plan targets and qualitative criteria
            • Optimization of the outsourcing strategy and revision of existing processes according to lean principles deliver an improved asset-operational model with balanced efficiency and quality
            • Implementing digital technologies and automation to enhance performance of existing assets
            • Developing new organization and governance models, enabling adoption of Industry 4.0 into the DNA of the organization

             

              Support organizations

              How to turn your support organizations – from corporate to delivery centers – from a cost factor into true value for your business

              We help clients to obtain the right balance between centralized vs. decentralized services and synergies vs. flexibility.We help support organizations in becoming value centers, orchestrating value creation at optimal overhead cost. 

              We offer clients customized solutions, such as:

              • Driving selling, general & administrative cost excellence, helping reduce both people cost and spending in a sustainable manner
              • Global business-services strategy with optimal global footprint – from visioning to implementation of the service-center structures and organization models – driving both cost optimization and commercial-value enablement
              • Transforming corporate centers, making them “fit for purpose” to take one and to push Industry 4.0 forward in their groups’ businesses
              • Smart admin, helping companies capture optimal value from digitalization and robotization