Differentiating between Noise & Signals of Supply Chain

In the days of absence of real time data, many Supply Chain decisions were probably taken late and quality of decision making could have been a challenge. So the emergence of the need for real time data which probably makes data virtually available any time and all the time. This probably is expected to improve the quality of Supply Chain decisions. I meet a lot of professionals and during the conversations what I realize is the probability of "Missing the forest for the bushes" has also increased. 

I often remember the case of an Equity investor of the bygone days. He probably used to see the data of his shares only once a day that too with a delay of one day (As in the old days the share prices data used to get printed in the news papers which got delivered next day morning!). Many a times he used to refer to a delayed data set to make his purchase or sell decision. Also his precision of exact price to buy or sell never got executed. The number of touch points in the system were high as each time you had to call your broker unlike the broker being an online interface as it stands today. While I appreciate the limitations of not having real time data, hence the quick turnaround time of decisions, I believe that in those days one probably made lesser decisions but had more bandwidth to identify the long term waves more accurately than many of the current generation. The difference probably is by not being overloaded with live streams each moment, the investor was able to see the pattern change, "Signals", more clearly than being surrounded by "Noise" all the time (which I think happens today.) Also not being able to differentiate between Noise and Signals, one probably makes more decisions there by investing more time to either find more data to support the decision or defend the decision. In all this a long term perspective for the Supply Chain to be managed may be missed while one runs around the bushes.

Having live and real time Supply Chain data as much as we have today, may tempt the Supply Chain professional to increase the decision making events. More the events lesser the intensity of every event. More number of decisions will only increase the "chaos" in the Supply Chain. One may be forced to alter higher number of decisions in the Supply Chain than some other Supply Chain which probably makes lesser but more effective decisions. My observations is less the number of decisions higher will be quality of decisions as one differentiates between critical & important elements of data.

While data is available, it becomes much more important to differentiate between "Data driving the decision or Decisions to be made driving the data to be collected". This will certainly go a long way in differentiating between Noise & Signals. With so much that technology can do to make data available real time, let us not be subordinates of data. Data driven decision making is "Noise". Decisions to be made in the Supply Chain driving Data requirements will be "Signals". And Supply Chain practitioners have to spend a lot more on this thinking process than feel starved of data all the time, there by making more investments in Technology to improve data availability. One creates his own viscous circle of need to data leading to technology implementation to capture the data which leads to new technology to process the data which leads to justifying the ROI of the technology. Decision making needs MIS reports which creates more resource stress to develop the reports and the final decision may still be of the same quality as before there by questioning the person or the technology. The person may say he has all the data (Noise) but is unable to identify the decision supporting levers (Signals).