DDBA 8581 Week 2 Decision Log Role Profile Example

What the Production Scheduler Actually Decides: A Role Profile Built on a Decision Log Recording Each Recurring Choice, How Far Into the Future It Commits the Plant and Who Would Notice a Wrong Call

Student Name

Walden University

DDBA 8581: Succession Planning: A Survival Tool of the Fittest

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

What the Production Scheduler Actually Decides: A Role Profile Built on a Decision Log Recording Each Recurring Choice, How Far Into the Future It Commits the Plant and Who Would Notice a Wrong Call

The Formal Description, Set Aside

The senior production scheduler at the composite chemicals manufacturer's larger plant is described in the job description as responsible for "developing and maintaining production schedules, coordinating with sales, maintenance and logistics, and ensuring materials availability." That description fits any scheduler. It does not say what this one decides. The incumbent has held the role for 17 years; the only other scheduler, hired two years ago, handles the smaller product lines.

The Decision Log

[after]

The log was built from three weeks of observation, the scheduler's email and interviews with the plant manager, the sales director and the maintenance planner.

Table 1

Recurring Decisions of the Senior Production Scheduler

Time Horizons

Jaques (1989) argued that the weight of a role is best measured by the time span of discretion, the longest period over which a person must exercise judgment before the results of that judgment can be reviewed. Most of the scheduler's decisions commit the plant for weeks and show their consequences within days, which a capable newcomer could learn in months. Three commit it for months to a year: inventory builds before turnarounds, the annual capacity plan and product transition sequences. Wrong calls on those surface late, and the scheduler's skill on them comes from having seen several turnarounds and launches.

Who Notices

The final columns show that errors in sequencing and slippage are visible quickly, to sales and customers, while errors in raw material call-offs and capacity planning surface slowly and to finance. A successor's mistakes on short-horizon decisions would be caught and corrected; mistakes on long-horizon decisions could compound unseen.

Readiness Against the Log

Mintzberg (1973) observed that managerial work consists largely of brief, fragmented activities and decisions made under interruption, which a job description cannot capture. Readiness should therefore be judged against the log, not against the description. The junior scheduler could likely handle the weekly sequencing within six months but has never made the turnaround or capacity decisions. A readiness assessment should ask whether a candidate has made each long-horizon decision at least once under supervision. Rothwell (2010) recommended that succession plans define the competencies a role requires before assessing candidates; the decision log is a way of defining them from what the role actually does.

What the Log Means for the Junior Scheduler

The log turns a vague readiness question into a specific one. The junior scheduler already makes weekly sequencing and cleaning decisions on the smaller lines, so those entries need only exposure to Reactor 2. The rush-order and slippage decisions require knowing which customers matter most and how sales will react, which comes from working alongside the incumbent through several capacity crunches. The three long-horizon decisions require something no amount of observation can supply in a few months: seeing the consequences of past choices play out. A readiness plan should therefore schedule the junior scheduler to make the next turnaround build and the next capacity plan input under supervision, even if that means the incumbent reviews every number.

Limits

Three weeks of observation may miss decisions made rarely, and the incumbent's account may overstate the role's complexity.

References

Jaques, E. (1989). Requisite organization: The CEO's guide to creative structure and leadership. Cason Hall.

Mintzberg, H. (1973). The nature of managerial work. Harper & Row.

Rothwell, W. J. (2010). Effective succession planning: Ensuring leadership continuity and building talent from within (4th ed.). AMACOM.