16. Structures of Operational Excellence Initiatives

One of the most differentiating factors comparing Operational Excellence (OPEX) initiatives from one company to the other is the way how they are organizationally embedded into the respective global and local organizations. There is a lack of evidence about the right structure and the optimal amount of trained people to successfully launch and maintain an excellence initiative. Some companies launched the initiative with the intention to suspend it as soon as the final objective, to make it part of the daily work, would have been reached, others believed in very decentralized structures or contrary invested in quite big central offices. We will try to clarify some aspects of this discussion, not only by relying on evidence from pharmaceutical OPEX programs, but also by reviewing evidence from other industries, especially the automotive industry. We will start with a basic consideration of what the general task of a structure is, than we will specify the objective an OPEX structure has to fulfill, followed by an overview of typical dimensions of an organizational structure. We will then discuss if the structure should change over the lifecycle of an OPEX Initiative and will conclude with a suggestion for an ideal OPEX structure.