Planning productivity claims double-count the same planner minute
AI, dashboards, process mining and automation often claim benefits against the same underlying work, inflating the business case.
Planning-transformation business cases often add together productivity percentages that overlap.
A dashboard reduces analysis time. An AI agent reduces exception-review time. A machine-learning model reduces forecast preparation. Automation reduces manual updates. But these improvements may all target the same planner hour.
Observation
Recent industry commentary warns that tool-level efficiency claims are frequently cumulative on paper but overlapping in practice.
Operational implication
Inflated benefits can distort investment priorities, create unrealistic staffing assumptions and hide whether decision quality actually improved.
Decision architecture
Benefits should be measured at the level of the end-to-end decision: what changed, how long it took, how often the recommendation was accepted and what business outcome followed.
Data requirements
The baseline should include planner time, exception volumes, override history, service, inventory, forecast value added and financial impact.
What should remain lightweight
Early time-and-motion studies and workflow experiments can remain in a controlled analytical layer.
What should be integrated
Mature productivity metrics should be connected to APS, BI and operating-model scorecards so benefits are measured once, consistently.
Efficiency is not additive when every tool claims the same minute.
Source discussion: Preeti Jain on LinkedIn.