With a $2B budget and over 24,000 employees, Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) has many business functions embedded in its work, and can greatly benefit from leading businesses willing to offer best practice advice in areas of interest to MCPS. Opportunities to incorporate industry best practices into school operations help support the school system's goal of efficiently and effectively utilizing school resources.

Past projects have included support for financial and facilities management, "six sigma" and "value stream" management, and call center and project management best practices, benchmarks and protocols. The latest efforts are focusing on elements of culture building, including strategies and metrics for both employee and customer engagement and the possible crossover application to public education.

These business-school partnership efforts to improve school system operations are collectively referred to as "Operation Excellence".

Operation Excellence began as a 5-month long, collaborative effort between 25 business leaders and 13 public school system leaders to examine ways in which the school system can improve the productivity of some of its business processes by capitalizing on the best practices used in business and industry. Four areas were investigated in this initial stage, and recommendations for change and improvement emerged, in the areas of Facilities Management, Financial Management, Baldrige Management and Technology Management. Read the initial report of recommendations presented to the Montgomery County Council in October 2003. Many of the recommendations emanating from the business-education partnerships were subsequently implemented, leading to tangible cost savings and operational efficiencies for MCPS. These accomplishments were presented to the Montgomery County Council in November 2004. This program has been a shining example of business-education partnership, and because of the successes achieved, Operation Excellence initiatives continue, in particular because much of this work involves long-term engagement to ensure a collaborative implementation of recommendations.