DECISION-MAKING

Application of Decision-Making Technique

Application of Decision-Making Technique

Introduction

Managers are faced with many decisions to make during the hour, day, week, month, and year. There are various decision-making techniques and approaches that a manager can use to process and administer these decisions must be made. Once managers have a good foundation where the problem stems, the manager can see about the speed in which to respond to the problem. Some problems can be fixed with quick action while managers may find other problems that need to be responded to by a more convoluted approach.



Case Study: Application of Decision-Making Technique

Mr. De Bono's (1999) "Six Thinking Hats" is an important and powerful technique. It is used to look at decisions from a number of important perspectives. This forces you to move outside your habitual thinking style, and helps you to get a more rounded view of a situation. If you look at a problem with the 'Six Thinking Hats' technique, then you will solve it using all approaches. Your decisions and plans will mix ambition, skill in execution, public sensitivity, creativity and good contingency planning (1999).

We would use this technique to get the results from all the different people that would be affected by using a virtual factory. We would use this technique is to look at problems from the point of view of Technicians, engineers, floor supervisors and factory managers. This will tell us how it would affect each of these groups so we can address the issues without confrontation. We would have to use all six of the thinking hats together to get a sound and just decision. White Hat: With this thinking hat you focus on the data available (1999). Look at the information you have, and see what you can learn from it. Look for gaps in your knowledge, and either try to fill them or take account of them. This is where you analyze past trends, and try to extrapolate from historical data.

Red Hat: Wearing the red hat, you look at problems using intuition, gut reaction, and emotion (1999). Also try to think how other people will react emotionally. Try to understand the responses of people who do not fully know your reasoning. Some floor managers wear this hat.

Black Hat: Using black hat thinking, look at all the bad points of the decision (1999). Look at it cautiously and defensively. Try to see why it might not work. This is important because it highlights the weak points in a plan. It allows you to eliminate them, alter them, or prepare contingency plans to counter them. Black Hat thinking is one of the real benefits of this technique, as many successful people get so used to thinking positively that often they cannot see problems in advance. Process engineers would wear this hat as they are always in it for the negative to try and fix it avoiding the positive.

The rest of these hats would be shared between the Technicians and the factory ...