An example of CASED

I thought I should illuminate CASED with an example.

It was 1998 and we were setting up an apparel factory at Bangalore, in the Bannerghata area quite close to IIM Bangalore. A time came when we were trying to decide what to do about backup power generators, because the electricity situation was as bad then as it is now.

So I requested one of my colleagues to do an analysis and come up with a recommendation. He came back and said, "I think we should purchase such and such generator of such and such wattage." He had simply added up the peak load of all equipment and lighting and come up with a number. It had taken him a few hours.

However, on a closer look, the problem was more complex. So we used CASED.

The CRITERIA of a good decision were:
- Initial cost.
- Running cost.
- Maintenance cost.
- Uptime.
- Switchover time.
- Scalability as the factory grew.
- And so on...

The ALTERNATIVES, it emerged were several. For example:
- We could buy a brand name generator.
- We could buy a "local" generator.
- We could buy two smaller generators, so that at least one was always up.
- We could buy an automatic-switchover system.
- We could choose what capacity of generator to acquire. If we acquired a larger generator, it would sometimes run at low load resulting, we heard, in more breakdowns and diesel wastage.
- We could choose not to buy at all - we could lease the equipment. Or we could buy one bigger generator and lease a smaller one that could be replaced as the factory grew.
- And so on...

We looked for SOURCES of information. We found:
- Other manufacturers who told us what they were doing.
- A few dealers who provided even more detailed insights.
- A few of our employees who had experience with other backup systems in the past.
- Our top team, which had some ideas about what business risk we faced (important for the buy vs. lease decision) and about how much we expected the business to grow.
- And so on...

These sources helped us understand the alternatives and their impact better. This "S" step is important because very often you overlook the most obvious of sources.

Then we EVALUATED all the ALTERNATIVES against the various CRITERIA. We made a grid with the alternatives listed in the first column and the criteria listed in the first row and put some measure of appropriateness in the cells of the grid (either scores or Good/OK/Bad, I don't remember which).

Then we finally DECIDED what to do and why. We DOCUMENTED the rationale for the decision as well, but I seem to have lost the documentation. :-)