ABP Learnings: MID-COURSE REVIEW

It is amazing how much one can learn in such a short time! In our Analysis of Business Problems (ABP) class, I have learned a lot about thinking critically and problem-solving. Already, we are halfway into our course outline; we have had 12 sessions and have currently analysed 8 case studies. Let us look at a mid-course review of what I have learned so far in the ABP course.

Firstly, we learned about Critical thinking, which is thinking about your thinking while you are thinking to make your thinking better. The simple principles of building critical thinking are:

• Question Assumptions
•  Reason through logic
•  Embrace diversity of thought

The purpose of critical thinking is to make informed judgements/reasonable conclusions; and to hone our ability to make good judgements. The next thing we learned was the structured approach to the decision-making process which involves the following:

• Understand the situation- What, Why, When, How, Where, How
•  Identify the right problem
•  Define your objective
•  Generate alternatives/options
•  Identify criteria (which option best achieves my objective)
•  Analyze the alternatives
•  Take a decision.
•  Develop an action plan (and identify the risks involved and steps to mitigate them)

After being introduced to the decision-making process, we began to analyse case studies. The first case was called ESCA (Eólica de Composites, S.A), a Spanish manufacturing company that manufactured a wide variety of metal and composite parts for different industries that were looking for a new location for their plant. There were two options available- The City and the Small Town and after analysing data presented the option that was the most viable. The second case was about The Future of Bio Pasteur, a biotech venture company that had a very profitable revolutionary blood pressure drug and wanted to create another revolutionary drug that would cure type 1 and 2 diabetes, the founders of the company were looking at whether they would launch the drug or return it to the lab for further development.

Can you analyse this problem? was the title of the third case we analysed, it had to do with a plant that manufactured quarter panels for covering the front of cars. The company suddenly started experiencing burrs (A rough edge or area) in their panels. The key players in the management that needed to deal with this were the plant manager, the line supervisors, the quality control manager, the Industrial relations manager, the Production Chief and the steward. We needed to determine the cause of the burred panels, it seemed like it was a case of sabotage or many some malfunction from the engineering department. One of the major things I learned from this case was to let the data lead me to the decision and to let my personal bias lead me. As we followed the data, we saw that the data seemed to point to the engineering department and the use of new materials as the issue for the sudden increase in the number of burred panels.

There are more cases we analysed that I will discuss in my next ABP blog post, but so far, I have learned the importance of critical thinking and following a clear and systematic process of problem-solving that can only be used in our case study analysis in class but in everyday life.

#MMBA5