There is a socio-economic imperative for companies to reconfigure their operations and transform them for improved performance, resilience, and environmental sustainability. Leading organizations are applying lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic and increasingly frequent climate-change-related shocks to reimagine what “operational performance” truly means.
Reimagining operations for productivity, resilience, and environmental sustainability through performance gains, flexibility, and speed
They’ve recognized that new digital tools and analytic approaches are freeing enterprises from having to choose between accelerated productivity improvement, environmentally conscious resource and product-lifecycle management, lowered carbon emissions, and a flexible value chain. Instead, businesses can—and must—attain all of them at the same time.
Our approach
An operating model for the next normal is one that continues to generate value through business cycles, managing competitive disruption, increased environmental regulation, and profound economic and social shifts. And to be effective, it will require a workforce with the skills to capture the opportunities and value available from digital and analytics technologies.
We help organizations understand precisely where and how they can maximize operational performance, resilience, and environmental sustainability and identify opportunities for reimagination including through conscious consumption and demand management. Through thoughtful, targeted development of the highest-impact applications of new technologies and workforce capability building, an organization can create a virtuous cycle in which resilience and reimagination drive simultaneous improvements in productivity and environmental sustainability.
Featured Content
The Next Normal Demands Resilience
The new era of operations
Featured capability
Operations Resilience Index
The Operations Resilience Index is a proprietary methodology that helps organizations benchmark the resiliency and flexibility of their value chains.
Based on a detailed analysis of an organization’s cost structure, current productivity levels, and rate of improvement, the index looks at a set of more than 40 factors across an organization’s value chain.
Resource Cleansheet
Bring environmental and economic transparency to product development and procurement by integrating CO2 optimization with cost and product design.
Special collection
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Building supply-chain resilience
Featured insights
Breaking operational barriers to peak productivity
Digital twins: The key to unlocking end-to-end supply chain growth
Today’s good to great: Next-generation operational excellence
From promising to productive: Real results from gen AI in services
Retailers’ climate road map: Charting paths to decarbonized value chains
How capital project owners can get just-in-time talent for their teams
Generative AI in operations: Capturing the value
Getting warehouse automation right
Digital logistics: Technology race gathers momentum
Tech and regionalization bolster supply chains, but complacency looms
The COO agenda: Stakeholder engagement
It’s coming home: The return of agile hardware product development
A new era for procurement: Value creation across the supply chain
Boosting Vietnam’s manufacturing sector: From low cost to high productivity
Europe’s €10 billion savings opportunity to deliver onshore wind and solar
Solving the digital manufacturing disconnect: A case study
AI: The next frontier of performance in industrial processing plants
The COO agenda: Vision, plan, and execution
Supply chain resilience—in China and everywhere else
What is the COO agenda?
Ops 4.0—The Human Factor: Apprenticeships today for skills tomorrow
Digital twins: The key to smart product development
Want more efficient finance and HR functions? Become more effective
Making modular construction fit
Moving supply chain leaders to the C-suite
Ops 4.0—The Human Factor: It takes two to build capabilities
What global business services need in 2023
When technology meets operational excellence
Maintenance and operations: Is asset productivity broken?
The next frontier of customer engagement: AI-enabled customer service
Battery recycling takes the driver’s seat
Procurement 2023: Ten CPO actions to defy the toughest challenges
Taking off: Scaling complex manufacturing in the aerospace industry
Indirect manufacturing costs: An overlooked source for clear savings
A new operations formula for the chemicals sector
Battery 2030: Resilient, sustainable, and circular
The next chapter: Lighthouses shape the Fourth Industrial Revolution
Failure is not an option: How to get resilience right
To regionalize or not? Optimizing North American supply chains
Deep learning in product design
Procurement in Africa: Exercising a muscle for challenging times
What matters: How to scale advanced analytics in corporate functions
Great service—but who’s paying?
Digital twins: Flying high, flexing fast
114 down, 10 million to go: The Global Lighthouse Network’s mission
Accelerating capital projects to secure advantages in the net-zero transition
Smart scheduling: How to solve workforce-planning challenges with AI
Inflation fighter and value creator: Procurement’s best-kept secret
The scaling imperative for industry 4.0
Emerging from disruption: The future of pharma operations strategy
Utility procurement: Ready to meet new market challenges
Digital twins: What could they do for your business?
A more resilient supply chain from optimized operations planning
The Titanium Economy
Delivering the US manufacturing renaissance
Taking the pulse of shifting supply chains
Ops 4.0—The Human Factor: Powering the learning and development engine
How mining companies reach the operational excellence gold standard
Ops 4.0—The Human Factor: The need for speed in building skills
The state of customer care in 2022
Converge IT and OT to turbocharge business operations’ scaling power
Transforming advanced manufacturing through Industry 4.0
New operations management systems for a digital world
Value, speed, and scale: A new era for operations in Asia
Future-proofing the supply chain
How to manage the coming wave of investment in capital projects
A better way to drive your business
Supply chains: To build resilience, manage proactively
Expand diversity among your suppliers—and add value to your organization
Full-potential procurement: Lessons amid inflation and volatility
Acting where it makes a difference: The corporate center that can flex
Training your own capital-project talent
Skinny design: Smaller is better
Outsprinting the energy crisis
Fueling digital operations with analog data
Japan’s design imperative
How can corporate functions become more agile?
Navigating the semiconductor chip shortage: A control-tower case study
Lighthouses reveal a playbook for responsible industry transformation
Bridging the labor mismatch in US construction
Transforming supply chains: Do you have the skills to accelerate your capabilities?
How business operations can respond to price increases: A CEO guide
Autonomous supply chain planning for consumer goods companies
How good are your internal operations—really?
Five digital and analytics battlegrounds for B2B aftermarket growth
AI-driven operations forecasting in data-light environments
Getting business process outsourcing right in a digital future
Product sustainability: Back to the drawing board
To improve your supply chain, modernize your supply-chain IT
Toward smart production: Machine intelligence in business operations
From speech to insights: The value of the human voice
Risk and resilience in consumer-goods supply chains
How to deal with price increases in this inflationary market
The digital spend control tower: Shift spending mindsets at scale
Navigating the labor mismatch in US logistics and supply chains
Supply-chain resilience: Is there a holy grail?
Innovation through the digital disruption of customer service
Managing change: What lies behind G&A spend transformation
How COVID-19 is reshaping supply chains
Lighthouses unlock sustainability through 4IR technologies
Managing the risks and returns of intelligent automation
Resilience: The whole-company fitness challenge
Industrial-resource productivity and the road to sustainability
Preparing global business services for the next normal
An on-demand revolution in customer-experience operations?
A manufacturing footprint fit for the future, via advanced analytics
Operationalizing machine learning in processes
Buying into a more sustainable value chain
Building resilience through procurement analytics
Global business-services sourcing comes of age
Project delivery hubs: Analytics for better megaproject outcomes
An ecosystem of partners: The foundation of capital project excellence
China’s digital R&D imperative
Digital supplier days: Events for capturing value in procurement
In volatile markets, embedded product costs can be a hidden treasure
How to boost growth in industrial services: Better customer experience
Prediction at scale: How industry can get more value out of maintenance
Responding to inflation and volatility: Time for procurement to lead
Establishing the right analytics-based maintenance strategy
Call for action: Seizing the decarbonization opportunity in construction
Overcoming barriers to multitier supplier collaboration
Beyond gadgetry: Changing the game in maintenance
Making supply-chain decarbonization happen
Industrial services’ overlooked sales force: Their technicians
Virtually possible: Getting remote work right for G&A functions
The project of the future: The best ideas from the 2021 GII Summit
Do your G&A functions fit your growth trajectory?
Can your supply chain deliver what your consumer wants?
A smarter way to digitize maintenance and reliability
Analytics-to-Value: Digital analytics optimizing products and portfolios
Labor-intensive factories—analytics-intensive productivity
Net zero or bust: Beating the abatement cost curve for growth
Rethinking operations in the next normal
Everyone is within learning distance: Building skills remotely
Calculating complexity: Maximizing the value of customization
CEO dialogue: Perspectives on reimagining operations for growth
With artificial intelligence, find new suppliers in days, not months
Transforming quality and warranty through advanced analytics
The future of G&A: Revitalizing the heart of the organization
The manufacturers lighting a path to sustainable growth
How a steel plant in India tapped the value of data—and won global acclaim
Preparing for the future of SG&A
Now is the time for procurement to lead value capture
The future of work after COVID-19
Capital Projects 5.0: Reimagining capital-project delivery
The industrial revolution in services
A new growth story: Maximizing value from remote customer interactions
Building a digital bridge across the supply chain with nerve centers
Five themes can help procurement shape recovery in the next normal
CEO dialogue: Perspectives on reimagining industrial supply chains
COVID-19: An inflection point for Industry 4.0
The corporate center: Driving the next normal
The resilience imperative for medtech supply chains
Digital performance management: From the front line to the bottom line
Breaching the great wall to scale
The right tools for every job: Lean and agile in maintenance
Finding the sweet spot in product-portfolio management
What’s next for remote work: An analysis of 2,000 tasks, 800 jobs, and nine countries
Reimagine: Preparing for SG&A in the next normal
The seven investment priorities for a resilient procurement function
Ops 4.0—The human factor: Skill, will and the next normal
Analytics helps global business services fuel resilience and return
Design cost-effective, carbon-abated products with resource cleansheets
Reimagining procurement for the next normal
Operations-driven sustainability
Building the vital skills for the future of work in operations
Risk, resilience, and rebalancing in global value chains
The role of spend analytics in the next normal
Industry 4.0: Reimagining manufacturing operations after COVID-19
Why now is the time to stress-test your industrial supply chain
Resetting supply chains for the next normal
Taking supplier collaboration to the next level
The next normal in construction: How disruption is reshaping the world’s largest ecosystem
Reopening safely: Sample practices from essential businesses
Beyond contactless operations: Human-centered customer experience
Is your supply chain risk blind—or risk resilient?
Jump-starting resilient and reimagined operations
From surviving to thriving: Reimagining the post-COVID-19 return
Coronavirus’ impact on service organizations: Weathering the storm
Managing a manufacturing plant through the coronavirus crisis
Featured Experts
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Philipp Radtke
Senior PartnerMunich
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Kweilin Ellingrud
McKinsey Global Institute Director and Senior PartnerMinneapolis
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Ignacio Marcos
PartnerMadrid
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Ed Barriball
PartnerWashington DC
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Martin Linder
Senior PartnerMunich
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