Decision Velocity for Manufacturers: FAQ

Decision velocity refers to the time it takes for your team to go from asking a strategic question to executing on the answer. It typically encompasses the following major steps:

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1. Defining what you want answered
2. Researching different options
3. Weighing and comparing their viability
4. Confirming with all relevant stakeholders
5. Launching the execution

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Of course, some decisions will be inherently slower than others, based on how complicated and strategically important they are. But recently, many leaders are recognizing that not all companies are equally equipped to make good decisions quickly. Roadblocks, like unclear goals, missing needed information, bottlenecks in the approval process, and more, result in decisions that could be solved in minutes taking hours, and decisions that should take hours end up taking days.

Studying and improving the decision making process is the core of a decision velocity-centered mentality.

There’s lots of reasons why this term is coming into the spotlight. Perhaps the most major is the advent of AI. As more and more tasks become automated, the human role is more frequently relegated to making decisions and assigning AI to execute them. With AI execution becoming the speed of business, and most AI agents operating at roughly the same, the decision-making step is one of the few areas where companies can still seize a competitive advantage.

It may seem at first that the decision-making step is a relatively small part of your overall process, compared to execution. That’s true, but there’s three other facts to keep in mind:

1. Unlike a lot of execution tasks, decision-making ties people up
2. Any given project will contain dozens, probably hundreds, of decisions
3. Improving decision velocity can mean cutting down the time each takes by up to 90%

Improving decision velocity adds up quickly to a large amount of total time. Moreover, that time is extremely valuable: freeing often your most expert and senior team members to execute on other projects rather than be stuck in the mire of decision-making.

Simply put, decision velocity is what’s left. Manufacturing has reached such heights of innovation and technological mastery that there’s little left to improve on the factory floor. Automation is so high and sophisticated, with forward-thinking shops already working “lights out”, with no human intervention on the factory floor.

As a result, companies are looking for other places to find a competitive advantage. Decision velocity among the most important of those places. Almost every aspect of the “back office” and manufacturing IT is called upon when you make decisions. Working on improving decision velocity means improving each and every one of those areas too.

Many people hesitate to invest in improving decision velocity because they think that there’s a natural tradeoff between good decisions and fast decisions. That’s a logical thing to assume, but it doesn’t end up being true. Often, decisions are bottlenecked and slowed by elements that are adding nothing to the knowledge or strategy of the decision maker. Indeed, it often leads to second guessing choices and overthinking correct solutions.

Other times decisions are slowed by nothing at all: the meaningless friction of inefficient searches, papers waiting on desks for signatures, people forgetting things or duplicating work. Focusing on eliminating these slowdowns both increases decision velocity and decision quality.

We identified three key areas to focus on for manufacturers wanting to improve decision velocity:

1. Being better informed
2. Being more flexible
3. Being more empowered

To learn more, check out our full guide to Decision Velocity in Manufacturing.