Learn how to improve business processes and execute your business strategy more consistently and reliably over time. In this learning path, discover how to apply operational excellence techniques to improve your organization’s processes, products, and services.
Identify and implement effective business processes.
Learn the components of quality and supply chain management.
Explore operational excellence concepts and tools.
Inventory Management Foundations
By: Steven Brown
Inventory Management Foundations
Course details
- 1h 20m
- Beginner
- Released: 8/29/2018
The success of a business can hinge on how its inventory is managed. There are costs to having too little—or too much—inventory on hand. In this course, instructor Steven Brown equips you with tools and strategies that can help you get inventory control right. Steven begins by going over the different types of inventories and highlighting both the traditional and hidden costs of inventory. He then dives into inventory management, discussing reasons to hold inventory, as well as how to approach production inventory, finished goods inventory, and service inventory. He also goes over control systems, and shares tools and management methods that can help you effectively analyze and control your inventory.
Learning objectives
- Describe what takt time is and why it’s used.
- Explain how using standardized parts reduces costs.
- Summarize the importance of quality at the source.
- Cite who should manage lean inventory.
- Describe how to create a lean culture in your business.
Quality Management Foundations
By: Steven Brown
Quality Management Foundations
Course details
- 1h 1m
- Beginner + Intermediate
- Released: 4/24/2019
A company’s success is largely determined by how well its employees understand and manage quality in their daily activities. In this course, instructor Steven Brown defines quality from a business perspective and covers major quality frameworks, tools, and strategies that you can leverage to more effectively manage quality in your company. Learn how to differentiate between the different ways quality is defined within your organization and your supply chain. Explore the key characteristics of major quality management frameworks, how several important quality tools help to improve performance, and how each of the three major quality strategies can contribute to a company’s long-term success.
Learning objectives
- Functional views of quality
- Frameworks for quality management
- Deming’s 14 points
- Pareto analysis
- Lean quality methods
- The six sigma method
- Benchmarking
- Measuring the cost of quality
Implementing Supply Chain Management
By: Daniel Stanton
Implementing Supply Chain Management
Course details
- 1h 25m
- Intermediate
- Released: 9/18/2018
Supply chain management is the system that connects and integrates the links of sourcing, procurement, conversion, and logistics management. By understanding how to manage this complex system—and ensure that key business functions are properly integrated—you can increase profits and reduce costs and risks. In this course, instructor Daniel Stanton steps through how to implement supply chain management in your company.
Daniel goes over the different supply chain processes that must be managed in an integrated way: plan, source, make, deliver, return, and enable. He uses this process view to describe the key challenges that supply chain managers need to address, the notable trends that are forcing supply chains to evolve, and a five-step process for helping your company implement supply chain management effectively.
Learning objectives
- Explore the fundamentals of source inputs within a supply chain.
- Examine the role of returning products in a supply chain.
- Determine how to calculate total costs.
- Explore the role of investing in flexibility when managing a supply chain.
- Discover how to increase visibility with a control tower.
- Identify the role innovation plays in supply chain management.
- Examine how artificial intelligence and machine learning help to monitor supply chain trends.
- Break down the fundamentals of selecting the right technology when implementing a supply chain agenda.
- Determine the best ways to collaborate externally when implementing a supply chain agenda.
Business Process Improvement
By: Eddie Davila
Business Process Improvement
Course details
- 58m
- Intermediate
- Released: 2/25/2019
Outdated, inefficient, or limited business processes lead to poorer outcomes and lower employee morale. If you’ve spotted a process in your organization that could use some retooling—or you want to build an entirely new process from scratch—then this course is for you. Join Eddie Davila as he shows how to become a change agent within your organization by improving business processes. Eddie goes over the traits of good business processes, as well as why some processes just don’t work. He then shares tips for crafting practical solutions that solve real problems at your company, shows how to leverage tools such as flowcharts to build brand-new business processes, and explains how to sell your solutions to stakeholders.
Learning objectives
- Recognize examples of assumptions in bad business processes.
- Recall which mindset leads companies to keeping business processes that worked previously but will not work in the future.
- Identify two key characteristics of a new business process.
- Determine if a block in a block diagram is out of place.
- Explain the advantage of using a flowchart when introducing an improved process to stakeholders.
- Summarize the importance of gap analysis.
- List the order in which you should present information when showing your new business process to stakeholders.
- Name two items you must provide to a client when a plan is ready to be approved.
Operational Excellence Work-Out and Kaizen Facilitator
By: Richard Chua
Operational Excellence Work-Out and Kaizen Facilitator
Course details
- 1h 10m
- Intermediate
- Released: 1/2/2019
If you are assigned to lead a Lean Six Sigma Work-Out or Kaizen event in your organization, where do you start? This course provides training on how to prepare, plan, and conduct these intensive working sessions. Dr. Richard Chua—an author, professor, and certified Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt trainer—explains what a Work-Out or Kaizen event is and how to prepare and plan, including developing the purpose, scope, and detailed agenda; selecting Lean Six Sigma tools; and deciding who to invite. He also shows how to conduct different types of events and follow-up. Sample detailed agendas are provided.
Note: This course does not cover general meeting facilitation. It is specific to planning Work-Outs and Kaizen events. Any prerequisite training in the Operational Excellence and Six Sigma learning paths should be completed beforehand.
Learning objectives
- Determine the purpose of a generalized scope statement.
- Identify the step in an agenda that tells participants if they are needed at the event.
- List the sections of a detailed agenda used to map a value stream.
- Name three helpful ways to generate solutions after mapping the value stream in a Kaizen event.
- Recognize when an FMEA workout is necessary.
- Recall the purpose of a solutions workout.
The New Age of Risk Management Strategy for Business
By: Dan Weedin
The New Age of Risk Management Strategy for Business
Course details
- 1h 29m
- General
- Released: 1/2/2019
A slew of factors are set to change the business landscape over the next few decades. AI, social media, globalization, and other developments have introduced risks that CEOs, business owners, or anyone responsible for business continuity must grapple with. In this course, Dan Weedin shares a practical approach to risk management, helping you think strategically about some of the most pressing risks of the 21st century. Learn how to protect your assets, people, and valuation from risks introduced by globalization and emerging technologies such as autonomous vehicles. Learn how climate change and extreme weather can hurt businesses, explore the issues introduced by cryptocurrency, learn how insurance may change in the future and why it’s important to business leaders, and more.
Learning objectives
- Recall the detrimental effects a BOT attack can have on a company’s customer database.
- Recognize which individuals companies frequently fail to include in mid-crisis actions.
- Determine how Google Alerts can help a company protect itself against threats.
- Identify a threat that is least likely to cause a company financial harm.
- Define “culture shock” in the context of business operations.
- Name a type of leader that often uses their position for personal prestige rather than performing their roles.
- Predict what will happen with business insurance as technology evolves.
Lean Inventory Management
By: Steven Brown
Lean Inventory Management
Course details
- 1h 9m
- Beginner
- Released: 9/6/2018
By leveraging lean principles in your organization, you can cut down on waste, improve quality, and enhance your business processes. In this course, discover how to apply lean principles to one of the most crucial of these processes—inventory management. Instructor Steven Brown begins by discussing how inventory fits into the seven wastes of lean, as well as how to forecast inventory for lean. He then goes over lean tools—including 5S and Kanban—and discusses lean tactics that can help you build and deliver high-quality products on time. To wrap up, he highlights lean strategies that can help you manage supplier inventories and inventory buffers, continuously improve, and make lean inventory management part of your company culture.
Learning objectives
- Describe what takt time is and why it is used.
- Explain how using standardized parts reduces costs.
- Summarize the importance of quality at the source.
- Cite who should manage lean inventory.
- Describe how to create a lean culture in your business.
Cost Reduction: Cut Costs and Maximize Profits
By: Chris Croft
Cost Reduction: Cut Costs and Maximize Profits
Course details
- 2h 19m
- Beginner
- Released: 7/16/2019
Cost reduction is about making more out of less. By cutting some of its most significant sources of waste and overspending, a company can increase its earnings—all without generating any growth in sales. In this course, instructor Chris Croft conducts a detailed tour of some of the best ways to save. Discover how to identify your most profitable customers (and which ones are actually costing you money). Learn how to cultivate a work environment that energizes employees and boosts their efficiency. Plus, explore techniques for handling costs that are unrelated to people, including how to more effectively manage inventory and spot ways to enhance your IT systems.
Learning objectives
- Different cost areas affecting your business
- Comparing cost vs. income
- Enhancing your work environment
- Focusing on the most important management tasks
- Getting better deals on raw materials and labor
- Recognizing your optimum quality level
- The hidden costs of subcontracting
- Where to avoid cutting costs
- Top ten cost-cutting actions to take