Decision Support
Why is decision support needed?
Decision-making is one of the top priority job requirements and important skill set of all managers. As managers, you make decisions most of the time using your experience, backed-up with data and information, and even sometimes using your intuition. However, you will come across situations when even the most useful data and information that you have, may lead you into making a decision that looks, feels and sound good at the present moment, but might have negative effects in the medium to long term. Existing data and information alone is not good enough to evaluate the future impact of your decisions due to uncertainty in operational and business conditions.
For example, you may be making a decision with determining the number of call centres or facilities you will need to establish in order to meet future demand, but you do know that demand is customer-driven, and using existing data alone will not help you make an adequate decision for the future as you just cannot control future demand. You may also need to predict future demand for a service, and the expected future revenues derived from investing in these new facilities.
So how do we evaluate your decisions, when you innately know there will be uncertainties, and there will be things that happen that might be out of your control along the way?
Welcome to the world of fact-based decision-making! We need to be able to make decisions based on facts, not just with data or information. This is where decision support systems is needed.
What do we do for our clients?
In order to allow you to make risk-free decisions in the present for the future, and to be able to evaluate the future impact of your business decisions in the present, we offer our clients the following decision support solutions:
Business Process Improvement (BPI)
If you will like to improve your manufacturing, service delivery or any business processes with an aim to delight your customers, use our BPI methodology which involves value stream mapping and swimlane diagramming. Our consultants are experts in this field and will be able to facilitate your organization to visualize many significant opportunities for improvements, and which will help set the strategic blueprint for all business improvement work in your organization.
Business Preparation Process (BPP)
If you are intending to establish new business systems, or launching new products or services using existing systems, and unsure if it will be a viable decision, use our BPP methodology. Based on the Toyota Production System's Production Preparation Process platform, BPP is a rigourous methodology that has been used by many organizations to establish right-first-time business, manufacturing or service delivery systems. Based on your business requirement, the BPP is crafted as a workshop that suits your immediate needs. This will allow you to simulate real-life scenarios of systems that you need to establish so that you may evaluate its effectiveness by experiencing it real-life in a risk-free environment. Nothing beats experiencing it first-hand before implementation of your new systems.
Discrete Event Simulation (DES) for Business Processes
If you are intending to establish new business processes, or improving an existing one, and do not have the resources to physically try it out, use discrete event simulation (DES) to help you evaluate your options. As with all types of simulation that has the ability to reflect accurately the randomness of the real world, DES provides a low-cost and risk-free environment for you to test out and examine your ideas before it gets implemented in the real world. DES simulates systems or processes by representing their operation as a chronlogical sequence of events, which is time-based. A common example of an event will be a customer arrival.
DES can be applied in a broad range of industries. Examples of real systems and processes that can be simulated using DES are manufacturing processes, supply chains, healthcare processes, transportation systems, or even financial transaction processes. The possibilities are endless.
Depending on the industry and operational setting that you are in, questions that you might need to answer using DES could be such as:
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What is the service level and wait time expected given a certain resource plan and workflow?
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What is the impact on inventory levels and delivery time based on a given supply route and/or policy?
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What is the effect on throughput given a new production schedule?
- How many ATMs do I need to reduce queue length and wait time?
- How many staff do I need at a sales counter to minimize customer wait time?
Software systems are needed to simulate real systems. One.Strategist uses Simul8 with our clients to provide DES solutions. To find out more about our Simul8 solutions, click here.
Predictive Modeling and Risk Analysis through Monte Carlo Simulation
If you have a sales plan, financial plan, delivery or even a project managament plan, and not sure if it will work amidst uncertainty, use Monte Carlo simulation to help you decide on your course of actions. The application of Monte Carlo simulation is extensive and spans across all industries, as long as there are business or economic decisions to be made. It is a static probabilistic simulation technique that is used to understand the impact of risk and uncertainty in all your analyses and plans.
Depending on the industry and operational setting that you are in, some questions that you might need to answer using Monte Carlo simulation could be:
- Based on variability in various cost elements, what is the range of profit margins that could be achieved?
- How sensitive are profit margins to volatile market conditions?
- Given variability in supply lead times for components of a product, what is the best possible lead time for delivery of the product to the customer?
Our consultants are experts in this field to provide you with support and training in Monte Carlo simulation for your predictive modeling and risk analysis needs.
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Decision Support
