Intelligence vs. Decision Making

Coming out of ProMat last week, we were taken by the growth in the Bot market in recent years along with the use of the word, “Intelligence”. With the latest and greatest tools in the market, you gain amazing insights into your business and operation. However, it’s important to remember that there are some key differences between intelligence and decision making. 

•  Intelligence: The current trending word is intelligence in referring to visibility to your operations. While there is significant value in the intel we are being given, we still rely on the decision making to action that intel. 
•  Decision Making: This is what we really want our tools to eventually do for us. Unfortunately, while many systems and tools in the market help with basic things like balance staff work load, optimal product placement, the majority of operational decisions are still reliant on our operations leaders to engage and make decisions on the inputs they are provided. 

One of the most common issues we see in any operation – highly automated or not, huge operation or small – is that operations struggle due to poor decision making. This is not the fault of the operations team, but more due to: 

•  Misaligned Goals – Simple misalignment between the leadership team. They push and pull against each other not realizing the overall process implications, requirements, nor impacts.

OR

• Misaligned Processes and Intent – The processes being used don’t align with the design intent of the operation. We continually try to fit a square peg in a round hole. 

Simply adding “Intelligence” to the operation allows better visibility, but doesn’t really address either of these root causes. While adding automation will mitigate some of the root causes by changing the variables and ideally simplify the operation, it will also fall prey to the same root causes. 

So, what is the solution? It’s really much simpler than many people believe. 

1.  Understand the key variables of the operation and build a way to track – define better KPIs.
2. We must teach the operations leaders how their role fits into the whole of the operation and understand the inter-connectedness – Teach leaders what matters.