Operational excellence frameworks — Case studies and applicability to SMEs in Singapore

Singapore is positioning itself as a key operational excellence hub in Asia for manufacturing in order to compete with other neighbouring developing countries with advantages such as lower costs of production. Hence, there is clearly a need for an Operational Excellence Framework for companies in Singapore to be able to assess their capability level in terms of operations. This paper presents a study of existing frameworks such as The Shingo Model, LESAT, CMMI and SQA, analyzing the strengths and weaknesses and concluding with the key barriers of adoption for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore. Results point to a gap between what is currently available and what SMEs require, suggesting a need to develop a customized simple yet effective Operational Excellence Framework and assessment toolkit specifically for SMEs in Singapore.