The High-Velocity Edge: How Market Leaders Leverage Operational Excellence to Beat the Competition

by Spear, Steven J.

• ISBN13: 9780071741415
• ISBN10: 0071741410
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-05-03
• Publisher: McGraw Hill

Summary

Generate faster, better results using less capital and fewer resources!Toyota, Alcoa, Pratt & Whitney, and the U.S. Navy's Nuclear Power Program operate in vastly different worlds, but they have one thing in common. Each of these organizations generates constant, almost automatic operational self-improvements at rates faster, durations longer, and breadths wider than any of its competitors.Excellence in operational management is the single element separating industry leaders from all others.The High-Velocity Edge is a blueprint for fueling innovation and improvement at both the management and process level in your own company. It's not magic, it's not luck. It's something that that can be taught, cultivated, practiced, and effectively applied to an organization. Spears explains how to: Build a system of dynamic discovery; that reveals operational problems and weaknesses Attack and solve problems at the time and in the place where they occur, converting weaknesses into strengths Disseminate knowledge gained from solving local problems throughout the company as a whole Create managers invested in the process of continual innovation Apply the lessons of The High-Velocity Edge, and you will enjoy profitability, quality, efficiency, reliability, and agility unmatched by any of your rivals.

Author Biography

About the Author
Steven J. Spear is a Senior Lecturer at MIT and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. He was an assistant professor at Harvard Business School for six years and has taught in Harvard Medical School programs. Spear won a McKinsey Award for the second-best Harvard Business Review article in 2005 and his fourth Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing Research for his article, "Fixing Healthcare from the Inside, Today," which showed the tremendous gains in performance enjoyed by hospitals that applied lessons from high-performing industrial companies. His articles about healthcare quality and medical education have been published in other well-regarded venues and he has authored many case studies.

Spear's HBR articles are among the highest selling reprints for the publisher. “Decoding the Toyota Production System” is at 110,000+ reprints and was cited as “most popular” on the HBS web page. “Learning to Lead at Toyota” is at 15,000 reprints and “Fixing Healthcare” has also been named a “most popular” reprint with over 10,000 reprints sold.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Foreword	p. xiii
Acknowledgments	p. xxi
Getting to the Front of the Pack	p. 1
Complexity: The Good News and the Bad News	p. 33
How Complex Systems Fail	p. 45
How Complex Systems Succeed	p. 87
High Velocity Under the Sea, in the Air, and on the Web	p. 109
Capability 1: System Design and Operation	p. 155
Capability 2: Problem Solving and Improvement	p. 193
Capability 3: Knowledge Sharing	p. 225
Capability 4: Developing High-Velocity Skills in Others	p. 263
High-Velocity Crisis Recovery	p. 295
Creating High-Velocity Health-Care Organizations	p. 323
Conclusion	p. 357
Epilogue	p. 365
References	p. 367
Notes	p. 377
Index	p. 395
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