Martin Hofmann - A Holistic Approach to Process Optimisation: Tools and Practical Examples to Create Efficient Workflows

The Springer series Management for Professionals comprises high-level business and management books for executives. The authors are experienced business professionals and renowned professors who combine scientific background, best practice, and entrepreneurial vision to provide powerful insights into how to achieve business excellence.

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Advancing globalisation and the rapid technological progress of recent years are strongly shaping our economic environment and leading to ever more rapid change. Thanks to new technologies, customers have access to new shopping channels 24 hours a day, 7 days a week! As such, new digital possibilities and ways to create and distribute their products and services more quickly and efficiently are opening up to companies.

This rapid change means that work processes in companies no longer remain stable over a long period of time and have to be constantly revised instead. This is one of the reasons why various methods of improvement management are being used more and more. These methods have their origins in the production sector, where they have been successfully applied for a long time. Increasingly, however, they are also being used to improve work processes outside of production.

Yet simply copying the approach from the production sector and applying it to the administration does not usually lead to the desired success, as the necessary holistic orientation and the required framework are often lacking. The basis for the continuous improvement of work processes is the corporate culture defined and exemplified by the company management with the corresponding framework conditions. Only when this is anchored in the company and lived by all those involved, the various methods with the corresponding tools can be used effectively and sustainably.

This book provides the necessary theoretical basis and ensures its transfer into everyday life. In the first part of the book, the basics are taught; the reference to practice is established in the second part.

Detailed structure of the book:

In addition to conveying the theoretical basics, it is my particular concern with this book to pass on concrete experiences from my everyday professional life to the readers by means of practical examples.

In order to give even more weight to this aspect and to emphasise the reference to the daily challenges in particular, two interviews with experts are included in the book. Stephan Spada deals with the optimisation of work processes aided by the Kaizen method on a daily basis in his professional work and is therefore very familiar with the topic and the requirements. Kateryna Brnnimann successfully accompanied the development and testing of a new maturity model.

Enjoy reading the book and applying it in practice.