4. The Cost of Decision Delay
A delayed decision doesn't necessarily look expensive. Production may still be running. Meetings are still happening. Emails are moving. But while a decision waits, materials can remain on hold, schedules can shift, work-in-progress can queue, delivery commitments become harder to meet and other teams may be unable to act.
Research gives us some useful examples:
Production planning: A 2017 study in the International Journal of Production Economics examined decision-making delays in MRP and JIT manufacturing systems. It found that the way information is processed and organised affects decision-making efficiency — and that optimising the information-processing structure can reduce decision delay. https://www.sciencedirect.com/.../abs/pii/S0925527317300750
Information overload matters: Earlier research comparing MRP, KANBAN and CONWIP found that the amount of information within a production-control system can itself contribute to decision delay. In the researchers' comparison, systems requiring less information processing required less decision-making time.
Late decisions can travel downstream: Research into job-shop production found that a delayed work-in-progress operation can affect successive processes and potentially postpone completion of the finished product. The researchers developed a method specifically to identify the affected downstream operations and minimise the resulting cost. https://www.tandfonline.com/.../10.1080/00207729808929530
Poor information can reach the customer: Research into manufacturing lead-time decisions found that inaccurate production-backlog information is a major cause of late deliveries, which can lead to penalty costs and reputational loss. https://www.sciencedirect.com/.../abs/pii/S0377221703008312
MC3 Method™ provides a structured way to diagnose where multilingual communication is slowing decisions, select appropriate tools, apply them in the workplace and evaluate what changes.
Where are decisions waiting in your organisation and is communication part of the delay?
Find out where to start. Download the free MC3 Audit Toolkit and examine communication across your own systems and processes:
MC3 Method™ | Practical tools. Measurable progress.
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