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Refinery

Decision simulator

Most assessments ask what people know. The decision simulator records how they decide.

Participants face a realistic situation from their own work, choose among options that are all defensible, and explain why. The output is not a score. It is a decision trace.

Try it now — 90 seconds

Try it

A short, scripted version. Your answers stay in your browser and disappear when you leave the page.

Illustrative example — fictional scenario

The situation

You are operations manager at a mid-sized manufacturer. It is Tuesday, 16:40. Your largest customer’s order ships on Friday. Quality control flags a deviation in one batch: within the legal tolerance, but outside your own internal standard. Re-running the batch takes two days and moves shipment to Monday. The account manager tells you the customer “will not accept another delay”.

How it works

  1. 01

    A realistic situation

    Generated from the knowledge base and the participant’s role in the organisation.

  2. 02

    What would you do?

    Several options, all defensible. No single right answer — the participant can also write their own.

  3. 03

    Why?

    The participant explains how they reached the decision.

  4. 04

    What would have had to be different?

    For the other option to have been the best one. This is where boundary conditions surface.

  5. 05

    Decision trace

    Situation, decision, reasoning and boundary condition, exported as a document.

  6. 06

    Into the knowledge base

    The trace can be added to the organisation’s knowledge base and analysed alongside theory and company data.

Why the second “why” matters

Opinions don't transfer. Conditions do. Asking what would have had to be different turns a personal judgement into a boundary condition the organisation can learn from.

What happens with a trace

In an engagement, each trace is added to the organisation’s own knowledge base. There it is analysed alongside the theory and the company data — across people, across situations.

Start with one question.

Tell us which decision is on your table. We'll tell you, in one conversation, whether Refinery can evidence it.

Request a conversation

Why we are called Refinery