Operational excellence means consistently doing things well across the value chain as a way of gaining competitive advantage. In its broadest terms, it is a discipline that drives corporate strategy. In their book The Discipline of Market Leadership, Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema suggest that operational excellence is one of three "value disciplines" that a successful organisation must chose from as its underlying operational model.

In practice, operational excellence is a means to achieving the other value disciplines: product leadership and customer intimacy. Doing things well across the organisation is fundamental, but most successful companies do one thing exceedingly well and identifying and reinforcing core competitive strengths is part of operational excellence.