Centre for Strategy and Performance

Linking Business Strategy to Action Plans

The determination of appropriate action plans is a key task for industrial managers. This task is essentially complex as it requires an understanding of the relationships among many variables. The relationships between objectives and variables in a given industrial situation are usually not available to managers in the form of scientific laws. Rather, they are discovered, defined, and labelled by managers who use an implicit understanding of the operating environment to make sense out of them. Based on a successful three years' PhD research, we have demonstrated that a central component in this ‘implicit understanding’ is a mental visualisation that links together many variables. The use of such a visualisation permits managers to have an overview of the situation. In this way, it becomes possible for managers to devise co-ordinated action plans which contribute to the achievement of the objective. We have developed a software tool (TAPS) to assist managers in linking business strategy to action plans.

TAPS was developed using Visual Basic and adopted the Connectance Concept (Inductive rule) and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) as its operating principles. The tool has been tested and applied in several multinational corporations to address strategic operational concerns. TAPS is a qualitative modelling tool which facilitates high quality logical discussions leading to clear and compelling actions by the managers. TAPS helps managers to understand the relevant variables, identify the main drivers and select which action to adopt. It provides the ability to capture and communicate the essence of a problem in an easy to understand manner.

Hierarchical Diagrams

Intelligent Analysis

TAPS has built-in functions called ‘Trace-Down’ and ‘Trace-Up’. Trace-Down is an analysis to determine the effect of a given direction of change in one variable on other variables in the model. Trace-Up analysis, starts with a desired direction of change in a variable and works back to find which other variables have to be changed in value and in which direction. These functions allow a user to perform an analysis on any variable in the model.

Integrated Documentation

Every variable has a record table providing a definition, coding, information on connected variable, and a list of filter functions for categorisation. These tables, along with the hierarchical model, provide clear documentation of the model which allows managers to:

• Communicate the basis of decision to other managers, without requiring any additional documentation
• Share the model with colleagues for collaborative modelling
• Indicate the strength of relationships between variables

Decision Support using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP)

TAPS has a built-in AHP decision support tool to assist managers to prioritise the identified actions for further execution.

Applications

TAPS was developed with cases involving industrialists, consultants, and academics. Example of applications and potential uses highlighted by industrialists were:

• Developing a corporate model for operations performance and selecting a portfolio of actions to enhance performance
• Identifying suitable technology to support postal service operations
• Selecting a range of actions to improve work centres performance at a packing plant
• Analysing the main drivers for solid-dose production plant life cycle cost
• Studying the relationship between the input and output measures
• Managing employees’ knowledge on operations improvement actions, tools and techniques

Collaboration Opportunities

In light of the success of this research, we would like to look for suitable partners to help us in commercialising TAPS as a strategic decision support tool. We are flexible on the form of collaboration and welcome further discussion. If you are interested please contact: