Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Business economics - Supply, Production, Logistics, grade: Sehr gut, The University of Surrey (School of Management), language: English, abstract: Following the concept of value disciplines (Treacy, 1993), companies can reach leadership positions in their industries by focusing on one of the three following areas: Product Leadership Customer Intimacy Operational Excellence Focusing on companies which are well known for their success based on operational excellence, goal of this paper is to compare and contrast the operation strategies of two manufacturing and two service firms: easyJet (service) Dell (manufacturer) Zara (manufacturer) McDonalds (service)