think: act International Management Knowledge: Roland Berger Strategy Consultants launches management book series

Achieving operational excellence is an important endeavor for all companies – it is the "holy grail" that leads to increased value over the long term. It is one of the essential strategic differentiation factors that gives answers to company growth, efficiency, cost and profitability issues. Companies that have a functional operational strategy and are prepared to make some difficult changes to improve their business are the "best in class". The first edition of think: act International Management Knowledge, called "Operations Excellence – Smart Solutions for Business Success", critically examines the best-in-class strategies and pinpoints approaches that will enable companies to achieve operations excellence.

This series of management books is based on the success of the international client magazine think: act, which has received the best of corporate publishing award several times. The first edition deals with operations excellence and smart solutions for business success. In four chapters, 26 experts from seven countries write about several management issues. In Part I, approaches and cases from R&D are introduced and discussed. Part II deals with trends and approaches in sourcing and purchasing and Part III examines developments in the field of manufacturing. Part IV talks about improving supply chain management and covers aspects such as comprehensive process optimization, reducing complexity and improving working capital.

Learning from the "best in class"

This book deals with the following questions: What value should a company create itself and what value should be generated by external parties? Where are the company's production sites and which key technologies and products take center stage? How and where does a company manage and support innovation? Where is a company's supplier base mainly located and how can the supply chain be steered to achieve maximum effects?
Operations excellence addresses these questions. The authors provide answers based on their extensive consulting experience, gained while working with leading industrial companies over many years. They keep two things in mind: What do leading companies do? And what can we learn from their approach? Axel Schmidt, head of Operations Strategy at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, says: "This book provides many helpful suggestions that enable managers to achieve operations excellence within their own company."

Three levels of excellence

"There are three levels of operations excellence," explains Roland Schwientek, one of the editors and Partner at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants. The first level – that of strategy –provides companies with information on how they should travel their own path to best practice and the milestones they should see on their medium- and long-term-horizons. The second level is that of performance improvement. It provides answers to questions such as: Which service level must my company reach to be competitive and achieve a leading edge? What requirements should my company expect from asset productivity and what should be the cap for our various cost types? The third level concerns enablers: the correct organizational form, best processes, most appropriate human resources and key performance indicators, as well as infrastructure excellence fields such as IT.

Next generation marketing and leadership in times of change

The book series is published in English. Upcoming editions will deal with the following issues. "China goes west": Vincent Mercier, member of the Executive Committee of Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, Charles-Edouard Bouée, expert for China, and our Partners in China are the first to describe this new powerful trend that will change the economic landscape for decades. "The new customer – next generation marketing": Roland Berger expert Kai Howaldt and the Marketing & Sales Competence Center present a unique concept that they have developed to cluster consumer and brands according to their core values. "Cool head, warm heart, working hands – on leadership in times of change": Burkhard Schwenker, CEO of Roland Berger Strategy Consultants lays out his guiding principles based on his insight that the CEO of the future needs a cool head, a warm heart and working hands.