Is there something called a Decision Supply Chain?
Many of us have heard of “supply chain”. In the traditional manufacturing supply chain, raw materials are procured in one place, goods are made in another place, and those goods are transported and eventually sold to customers in many different places. We source, we produce, we distribute and we consume.
Can we think of decision making as a supply chain as well? What are the key elements within this supply chain?
It begins as a business issue, an event occurring somewhere in space and time. The business issue then leads us to create hypotheses. From those hypotheses arise questions that we ask ourselves. Our questions lead us to data. When we have the right data, we develop findings. From those findings, we generate insights.
What do we do next? We evangelize those insights, execute on them, measure and report on the results of our efforts. This measurement leads to more questions and the cycle continues. That, put simply, is the decision supply chain.
What are the implications of this? As companies try to optimize their supply chains across different parameters such as cost, time to market, on-time delivery, etc., what should one consider w.r.t to the decision supply chain? What are the organizational implications of this concept?
