The contemporary commercial environment presents a plethora of challenges for the brewing industry. At a corporate level there is an ever-expanding number of areas that require concurrent attention such as: sustainability, supply chain uncertainties, responsible drinking, digitisation, competition and market trends. Good decision making is key to good performance and the cost of making poor decisions can sometimes be catastrophic. The dilution of manager focus, pace of change and the imperative of agility all make the likelihood of consistent good decisions ever more challenging. Existing manager decision making is typically guided by a range of things including experience, values and the individual’s ‘mental model’ of the aspect being controlled. Is there a better way to improve the quality of decisions?

The field of control science has produced many insights and impressive capabilities over the years. It has developed various means of determining optimal control signals (decisions) that produce desired outcomes. There is growing interest in the control science community in the ability to apply these capabilities, in a qualitative sense, to improve human decision-based control.

Areas of relevance in the brewing industry include strategy and the setting/review of policies, goals and key performance indicators. This is also inherently aligned with the intent of manufacturing excellence programs (which typically have a focus on guiding decision making to optimise human behaviour). The application of control science principles to managerial decision making has the potential to significantly improve decision outcomes, guide the efficient allocation of attention and reduce the probability of catastrophic decisions.