Survey
Breaking operational barriers to peak productivity
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Our latest research examines how a new take on operational excellence can help rekindle productivity—and reveals five practices that matter in jump-starting performance.
Article
Today’s industrial revolution calls for an organization to match
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Operations technologies are here. Productivity gains are not. Why? It’s increasingly clear that to transform industrial production, industrial organizations must also be transformed.
The role of the COO
Article
Delivering the strategy: The COO agenda
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In recent discussions, COOs reflect on the need for an often-missing defined agenda that reflects the role’s unique responsibilities. Here’s how to start.
Blog Post
The COO agenda: Personal operating model
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Effective COOs are inspirational leaders and role models who are also methodical in building a team to which they can delegate day-to-day operations. Defining a personal operating model is a key factor in that success.
Blog Post
The COO agenda: Organization and talent
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Rather than running the day-to-day operations, COOs can add value by focusing on more strategic aspects. What does this mean for their organization’s culture, infrastructure, and talent strategy?
Blog Post
What is the COO agenda?
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Too few COOs have a defined agenda that reflects the role’s unique responsibilities. Here’s how to start.
Blog Post
The COO agenda: Vision, plan, and execution
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Articulating your COO aspirations, putting a plan together, and delivering operational excellence are the first stage for delivering the COO agenda.
Blog Post
The COO agenda: Stakeholder engagement
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A COO plays a pivotal role in building relationships for their organization. Fostering connections that last requires care and consideration.
Featured insights
Article
Supply chains: Still vulnerable
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When it comes to supply chain resilience, have companies taken their eyes off the ball?
Article
Tech and regionalization bolster supply chains, but complacency looms
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The race for resilience is changing the way global supply chains look and transforming the way they are run.
Article
Indirect manufacturing costs: An overlooked source for clear savings
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Indirect operations functions make up a significant share of total operations—and optimizing them can deliver sizeable bottom-line impact.
Macroeconomic conditions have led to frequent—and sometimes dramatic—repricing of essential materials, products, and services. CEOs can look across their organizations to mitigate the effects, including using the procurement function to catalyze cross-functional actions that promote efficiency and resilience in rapidly evolving market conditions.
McKinsey Direct
Spend digital twin: A tool for volatility
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Spend digital twins could revolutionize procurement by handing negotiation power back to buyers—providing a clear and real-time view of fair market price.
Article
Overcoming challenges in aerospace procurement
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By addressing four persistent challenges, aerospace procurement leaders could alleviate supply shortages that are hampering operations and threatening fulfillment and growth.
Article
Where procurement is going next
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Our latest procurement benchmarking data reveals the tools, capabilities, and ways of working that are helping leading companies protect their profits in turbulent times.
Article
Outsprinting the energy crisis
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High energy costs are hitting Europe’s industrial players hard. Bold action could protect margins today and make companies cleaner, stronger, and more profitable for the future.
Article
Full-potential procurement: Lessons amid inflation and volatility
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Procurement organizations are uniquely positioned to catalyze cross-functional actions that promote efficiency and resilience in rapidly evolving market conditions.
Interview
How SQM accelerated operational excellence with technology
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After ten years of sustained, continuous improvement, a new set of sophisticated challenges led SQM to merge operational excellence with innovative technology. The result: a performance breakthrough.
McKinsey Direct
Decoding success: How leaders get value from advanced planning systems
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The leaders in adopting advanced planning systems understand that the process of designing and planning the transformation is usually more important than the technology itself.
Article
Supercharging product portfolio performance with generative AI
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When generative AI tools do the heavy lifting, companies can optimize their product portfolios faster and more effectively.
Article
Building AI-enabled services
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Advanced digital, automation, and AI technologies offer a great customer experience at low cost. The real challenge is building services organizations that can make the most of these new tools.
Article
From AI to Impact: Capabilities powering Lighthouses’ 4IR adoption
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When technologies reach a certain level of maturity, the next challenge is speed and scale. Factories and entire supply networks—not use cases—become the pilots.
Blog Post
Gen AI’s productivity promise: Huge potential but most have not yet reached scaled impact
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Generative AI could unleash a new wave of productivity growth in operations, but many companies remain hampered by a lack of capabilities, risk-related concerns, and an unclear road map to value.
Article
How manufacturing’s Lighthouses are capturing the full value of AI
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AI is defining the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and production front-runners are finding significant impact throughout the factory, production network, and supply chain.
Blog Post
Making the leap with generative AI in procurement
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Generative AI can have a transformative impact across the operations value chain, and CPOs who engage with it can capture early value from the power of LLMs. But knowing where and how to start isn’t easy.
Blog Post
2024 tech takeaways for leaders
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In today’s era of ‘permanent upheaval,’ shaping your organization’s future, as well as your own, will involve four tech-related areas.
Article
The next chapter: Lighthouses shape the Fourth Industrial Revolution
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The story of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is moving forward at speed, with members of the Global Lighthouse Network grasping the pen and writing a tale of the need for scale.
Article
Deep learning in product design
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A revolutionary approach is transforming the way companies approach tough engineering optimization challenges.
Article
Value, speed, and scale: A new era for operations in Asia
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CEOs are embracing radical new approaches in business operations to rapidly scale growth. And Asia will be a dynamic proving ground.
Article
Prepare now for the future of industrial services
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A 600-executive survey reveals how services organizations can adapt to a remote-first world by revamping their operating models and carefully tailoring commercial models to match.
Article
How CEOs can win the new service game
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Four irreversible trends are redefining excellence in service operations. For today’s leaders, they could be a transformational opportunity—or an existential threat.
Article
Fueling digital operations with analog data
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Intelligent document processing, with humans in the loop, allows companies to bridge the business operations gap between the analog and digital worlds.
Article
Decarbonizing logistics: Charting the path ahead
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Companies need to reduce their logistics emissions to meet decarbonization targets, but a new McKinsey survey finds that few...
McKinsey Direct
A new holistic view on circular value chains
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Reimagining the traditional linear flow of supply chains to support circularity could be a growing source of value for companies,...
Article
Power spike: How battery makers can respond to surging demand from EVs
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As the auto market embraces electric vehicles, battery demand is soaring. Bold moves in gigafactory construction, supply chain...
Article
2022 and beyond for the packaging industry’s CEOs: The priorities for resilience
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The revolution sparked by two megatrends—sustainability and digital—is unprecedented in the packaging industry. We...
Article
It’s not easy buying green: How to win at sustainable sourcing
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Green steel, recycled plastic, and other materials with low emissions intensity are already scarce—and will get even harder...
Article
Delivering on construction productivity is no longer optional
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Why the construction industry must climb out of its productivity rut—and why it hasn’t yet.
Blog Post
How capital project owners can get just-in-time talent for their teams
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Capital projects are set for a dramatic jump in investments over the next few years and project owners can now harness an analytics-based approach to plan the best possible teams.
Article
Training your own capital-project talent
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With talent scarce, systemic capability building has become an imperative for the capital-project industry. Here’s how to get it right.
Article
Capital investment is about to surge: Are your operations ready?
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By 2027, about $130 trillion will flood into capital projects. But few organizations today could deliver with the speed and operational efficiency the influx demands.
Amid labor-market instability, many companies still struggle to find and retain staff—even as others retrench. Long-term trends pose particular challenges in sectors such as heavy industry and transportation, while across sectors, workers seek more flexibility and purpose.
Article
Is your frontline workforce strategy right for where you are?
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With sharper local insights, a fit-for-purpose talent strategy can help manufacturers and other frontline-intensive businesses turn talent into a competitive edge.
Blog Post
Organizational evolution and getting empowerment right
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Properly guided and supported empowerment is the great management challenge of our times.
Blog Post
Unlocking frontline workforce stability and productivity in operations
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To create a talent strategy that fosters frontline stability and productivity, organizations need to start by conducting a holistic talent assessment. Here’s how to do it.
Report - MGI Research
Performance through people: Transforming human capital into competitive advantage
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A dual focus on developing people and managing them well gives a select group of companies a long-term performance edge.
Article - McKinsey Quarterly
Gone for now, or gone for good? How to play the new talent game and win back workers
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Nearly half of the employees who voluntarily left the workforce during the pandemic aren’t coming back on their own. Employers must go and get them. Here’s how to start.
Article
Navigating the labor mismatch in US logistics and supply chains
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Structural shifts in the labor market have left companies struggling to recruit and retain workers. But a set of concrete actions can help address this imbalance across value chains.
Article
Managing change: What lies behind G&A spend transformation
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SG&A priorities are changing as long-term value-creation work, such as improving customer experience and creating new business-information products services, takes on greater importance.
Collection
The Human Factor in Operations
The Human Factor in Operations blog explores the unique input that people can bring and the capability-building programs that can prepare them for success