What we do

Excellence is what we aim for - systematic value creation is the foundation

Background

Hidden champions have a unique DNA: their processes are consistently geared towards the customer, and they are highly innovative, quick and efficient.

However, process excellence requires outstanding leadership – from top management to the shopfloor. Interlocking both in a holistic value-creation system enables continuous improvement of the following three parameters:

  1. Best quality
  2. Lowest costs
  3. Shortest lead time

Champions create the right balance between company and employee development in order to unlock the company’s full potential.

Sustainable economic success can only be ensured if the leadership team can implement a positive change culture. Once successfully implemented, it takes less effort to defend excellence in a changing market environment and competitive setting than to maintain mediocrity.

There is a system behind entrepreneurial excellence that requires less effort than sustaining mediocrity.

The Approach

Excellence can only be achieved and maintained by simultaneously developing the company and its employees. Viewing employees not as a cost factor but as the key driver and source of change is key to our approach of ‘lean transformation’.

In the United States, institutional investors already embody this systemic investment approach, which is built on the principles of lean management. Operando Partners is the European pioneer in this field.

We master and use the classic repertoire of value enhancement, integrating it into the lean transformation approach. The goal is to establish a value-creation system that consistently eliminates profligacy and enables the company to improve permanently. But it takes power of persuasion and backing from both management and shareholders to accomplish this objective. With Operando as a strong partner, companies and employees can rest assured that the shareholder is fully committed to this concept of value creation.

We support the active development of our portfolio companies through our subsidiary Operando Trainers GmbH, which pools a large number of operational managers who have experience in the ‘lean’ approach and can assume various roles on site:

  • Interim management
  • Coaching of management
  • Training of employees
  • Project management for pilot projects
  • …