## 5 Decision Support Workflow
### Main Criteria and Decision Support Workflow  
The operational strategy is executed well if the key business or plant KPIs such as profit, cash flow, and return on investment (ROI) targets are achieved. These three factors are defined in common agreement with the executive management and the owners or board of directors. Reporting to the executive leaders, plant managers and sales executives are responsible for delivering these numbers. The successfulness of the financial KPIs is measured in comparison to industry benchmark figures. The attainment of all these targets can be improved if overall costs are decreased. Hence, in this work, we focused on minimizing the costs inflicted by the planned changes in the structure and operation of the mini-factory.  
The operational strategy can be achieved only if top-, medium-, and low-level KPIs are all achieved by the business (or the plant, in our case). Top (or strategical)-level KPIs are monitored on a yearly, quarterly, and monthly basis. Medium (or tactical)-level KPIs are monitored on a monthly and weekly basis. Low (or operational)-level KPIs are monitored on a weekly, daily, and shift basis. The most important top-level KPIs of a plant are: (1) quality, (2) efficiency, (3) delivery precision, (4) inventory, (5) lead time, and (6) human resource ability. These KPIs are subordinated to the profit and cash flow targets. Properly optimized KPIs show a company's competitive advantage, also on a global level.  
Processes must be setup in such a way that they are effective and efficient at the same time. A process is effective if it is doing the right thing, and efficient if it does it as well as possible. The operation of our plant can be seen as it produces the right quantities and qualities in the right time with a continuous attention to loss reduction, such as loss of energy, time, raw material, semifinal and final products scrap, human labor, etc.  
The ultimate goal of the project presented in this paper was to improve the service level of our plant while minimizing the costs. This is because the service level is the main differentiator factor for a plant in our competitive environment, given that quality and price are practically non-negotiable. From the above KPIs, there is one that is very differently managed in a HMLV environment compared to mass production: delivery precision. This factor is the main differentiator among the competitors in our market. Note that the flexibility and responsiveness of an organization define the length of production lead time, and implicitly the delivery performance.  
A close analysis of CDD behavior depends, especially in a HMLV environment, on many external and internal factors. Our ultimate goal was to spot those where a change in the manufacturing system's structure or operation can result in a substantial performance improvement at an affordable cost. To find the solution, an overall decision support workflow was setup consisting of the following steps: (1) scope setting, (2) detailed DES, (3) sensitivity and cost analysis, (4) model- and data-driven analytics, (5) validation and verification, and (6) maintenance and update of the system (see also Figure 6). In what follows, the steps of the decision support workflow are described.