When it comes to managing complex supply chains, it turns out that intuition, a finger in the wind, and other forms of wild guessing are among the best practices deployed by the best in the business. And that doesn't happen only in supply chain planning; it's pretty much endemic to all aspects of business management. We only pretend we have processes driven by rational thought and perfect information. Reality is much less tidy: Irrationality dominates, and guesswork is all too often the basis for complex and highly consequential business decisions.
Think I'm being negative? Look at what's happening in the corner of the market known as enterprise performance management, corporate performance management, or just plain business management. The ERP vendors are buying leading-edge EPM/CPM companies as fast as they can be discovered, and pushing massive marketing campaigns to their customers about the wisdom of being smarter when it comes to running a business.
These campaigns have an element of mea culpa to them. As one vendor executive told me recently: The bottom line is that the ERP vendors sold you a bunch of software that doesn't actually help you make smarter decisions. In fact, it may make decision-making more difficult.
Source: Managing Automation, http://www.managingautomation.com