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Purpose: This paper’s purpose is to deepen our understanding of what drives bottom-up operations strategy formation – that is, continuous improvement activities at the front line – with a particular focus on operations strategy understanding. That way, it aims to contribute to the awareness of management quality in manufacturing – a cornerstone of national competitiveness. Methodology: We examine the antecedents of individual Kaizen generation by frontline employees, drawing on the well-established Motivation-Opportunity-Ability framework and focusing on the dimension of ability – that is, understanding operations strategy. Survey data on 217 frontline employees, working in 17 teams on 11 different production lines, were “triangulated” with their team leader assessments and the plant’s archival records. We tested the hypothesized relationships via analyses that incorporate both structural equation modeling and multiple regression techniques. Findings: Our results suggest that employees typically overestimate their understanding of the plant’s operations strategy and that productivity is driven more by an objective than a subjective understanding of that strategy. We also find that incremental innovation is facilitated by supervisor support, employee engagement, and an employee suggestion scheme; in contrast, neither autonomy nor selected control variables (e.g., age or seniority) has a significant effect. Originality: Our findings and the unique metrics we developed for better management of strategy understanding should help managers increase the productivity of their operations and thus the competitiveness of their respective firms.