Customer Reviews

Customer-Driven Operations Management: Aligning Business Processes and Quality Tools to Create Operational Effectiveness in Your Company

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This is a great framework and overview of the key components for implementing operational excellence, particulalrly in servce and knowledge worker sectors... whets your appetite for more detail with some gresat references.

I plan to use it as a core introductory text to our "Journey to Operational Excellence" program.

Happy customers will help your company be successful. But if you can make YOUR CUSTOMER more successful, the payback to you can be manyfold. Would you like to figure out how to do this?

Chris Ahoy has figured it out. His book is based on his own experience in managing the physical facilities department at Iowa State University over the past 12 years. Chris and his organization have won numerous awards and have built a solid reputation for customer service at its best. He has documented his own success and shown others how to do it.

The book is really about how to be an outstanding LEADER, describing in a logical fashion all the elements that go into that task. All the normal management buzzwords are present - organizational design, transforming the workspace, metrics, systems approach, and all the rest. What sets this book apart from the competition is the way that Ahoy has organized every chapter and every section around three broad themes: (1) satisfy the customer, (2) delight the customer, and (3) make the customer successful.

You will have to read the book yourself to see how theme #3 is handled. This is what makes the book unique.

If I were to criticize the book in any way, it would be that maybe the author has tried to be a bit too all-inclusive. He has provided "the shell" of a complete management handbook but hasn't filled in all the details of every aspect of that shell to make a true handbook. Considering the cost and size of the book, he couldn't! The book is only 272 pages long. But to compensate for this brevity in some of the areas (notably in Chapter 11 on quality tools) , the author has provided many useful references to point the reader in the right direction to fill out the shell for himself/herself. The book is solid, and the ideas that Ahoy presents really do work. He proved it in his own job!

As a Quality professional overseeing the day-to-day operation and long-term strategic focus of an ISO9001:2008-based Business Management System, I'm always looking for practical, real-world ideas I can use to enhance my organization's performance. As I have found over the years, there's no absence of material in the published realm addressing organizational performance improvement, some of it eminently practical and truly implement-ready, and some... well... decidedly less so. And because we're a service organization with no involvement with manufacturing in any way, I've found some material unsuitable for our somewhat unique environment. Then, almost out of the blue, comes a work like this, written by someone with real `street cred' and the actual award-winning results to back it up.

Someone once stated `... Knowledge without practical application is useless...', and I think it fair to say that's an unstated subtext of this work.

Some years ago, I had an opportunity to meet Chris Ahoy, tour his operation at Iowa State University, and experience, first-hand, what I think are the truly spectacular results of his efforts and those of his team. We spent several hours together afterwards discussing the theories and concepts that eventually came together in this book. I was significantly impressed then -- I remain significantly impressed now. In my view, what Chris has brought to the forefront has been driven by his real-world, hands-on experience, his inquisitive `how-does-this-work-and-how-can-it-work-better?'|continual improvement nature, and perhaps most important of all, his seemingly endless passion and enthusiasm for seeking excellence and modeling it in his organization and to all those with whom he interacts.

Bottom line? He's the `real deal' -- a genuine `student of the game' -- and his insights documented here and elsewhere are ones I value highly. Without reservation, therefore, I recommend this book to anyone interested in developing a practical plan to help their organization achieve sustainable success.

Christopher Ahoy has written a book that is world class and that can guide you and your organization to world class effectiveness. The book is not just theory, it works in practice. Chris Ahoy's organization at Iowa State University has won numerous awards for operational excellence. Highly recommended!!!!!

Customer-Driven Operations Management is a book that everyone should read, whether you are new to facilities operations or have been in the field for years.

In this economic time, most organizations are only looking at the financial part of their organization, when in reality, organizations need to review policies and procedures, internal and external benchmarks, customer relations, and many more other points. Mr. Ahoy shows you the steps and the reasons why you need to do this.

I highly recommend this book.

The Oregon Institute of Technology has selected this book as a text for an advanced Operations Management course. This course was just completed for the 2010 Spring term.

We have found the text to be one of the best available for this series. The students were very impressed with the content and readability. The figures and charts, while complex, were very understandable.

Recommend other colleges and universities consider this book as a text for their Operations Management courses.

In Customer-Driven Operations Management, Christopher Ahoy, makes the point that the internal resources of the firm have to be given continuous review to align goals to actions, and also that they must be managed carefully for the firm's continued competitive advantage in the modern fast-paced, global economy. He alludes to the VRIO framework of analysis--those Valuable, Rare, Inimitable, and Organizationally-embedded aspects of the firm, that are critical factors to be scrutinized and tweaked to achieve optimum outcomes. These internal resources are the basis of differentiation of the company from its competitors. In this book Christopher Ahoy draws from his vast experience in strategic and operations management, to develop models of analysis that a firm can use to continuously improve itself via growth of the VRIO factors, and thereby meet and exceed its corporate vision. This is a valuable book for both practitioner and scholarly communities.

BREENA E. COATES, Ph.D.

Chairman, Department of Management

College of Business & Public Administration

California State University, San Bernardino

"Customer-Driven Operations Management" gives an overview of the multitude of factors to be considered and embraced by any manager interested in moving her organization toward the aspiration of being "world class". This book outlines the parameters of the game and discusses personal qualities, process concepts and off-the-shelf tools available for designing and monitoring the process of advancing an organization to shine in the world. It presents things you can do and tools to support your organization to rise above the competition and provide outstanding results even in challenging times. It is a must for service organization leaders and a valuable tool to stimulate the thinking of any manager.

I am looking forward to a narrative version of the story of Ahoy's journey to excellence. Hope he finds the time to write it.

Customer-Driven Operations Management is an exceptional book. In researching this material, you'll find that Chris Ahoy has led the Iowa State Facilities Planning and Management group to a high level of excellence. They were just awarded the Iowa Recognition for Performance Excellence 2009 Gold Level Award. This award has only been given out 3 times in 10 years. Very impressive.

In my mind, there's nothing better to read than a SUCCESSFUL system's story. I think this is a great framework for any Service-oriented facility, and I look forward to upcoming material.

I would definitely recommend this book.

Having worked with Chris, I can confirm that this book reflects his passion for helping others create a world-class organization that serves its customers. If you have heard Chris speak, you know what I mean. I think it is his way of making the world a better place - and I think it might work.

A trip through the table of contents will give you some idea of the journey you will take. What you don't see is that you will get the insights of someone who has experienced the journey he presents and you will get his unique perspective on the tools and techniques he has used. It's worth the read.