OPEX Asia 2019

Day 1 - Great networking and discussions today with peers in operational excellence. My first impressions:
- Focus automation on areas with minimal viable products; and don't forget to clean-up your waste first
- Operational excellence is bottom-up and top-down at the same time
- Start your transformation journey with the 'why'; and then experiment in high speed to create tangible results
- Yes, you can have a global IT organisation with only three hierarchical levels - implementing self-organising teams
- Who owns the customer journey in the company? Ideally the Operational Excellence unit; it is a cross-functional topic

Day 2 - Excited about the feedback I have received for my presentation about People Excellence; people are not machines and we thrive with freedom and passion.

Though the day continued to be exciting with many insights; here is what I got out of it:
- Operational Excellence is not a nice to have - it is about surviving in the market
- Rule-based activities can be automated with a bot; a great opportunity to up-skill people and engage them in more meaningful activities
- Employee Experience is a broad journey with social, physical and technical aspects; and requires a wide set of methods
- Drive agility by moving the focus (30%) from big ticket improvements to small Kaisen improvements
- Create an environment that allows and pushes experimentation; this is one of the foundation for transformation initiatives
- Ownership and curiosity easily compensates for the lack of expertise