What's New Across Visual Decisions This Week (June 21, 2026)

The maturity assessment can now be answered at whatever depth you have time for, with the honest news that the fast way finds the same gaps as the long way. Plus: Visual Decisions' work with CESMII is now recognized across the platform.

Last week was about reading a program's value through whatever lens you think in: by initiative, by use case, by company goal, across the six CESMII dimensions, every dollar still tracing to the P&L. This week is about the moment before any of that: getting started.

A manufacturer's hardest moment with a maturity assessment is the first one. A full department assessment is a real commitment, and that commitment is exactly what stops a lot of teams from ever getting a baseline. So this week the assessment stopped forcing a single depth. It now meets you wherever you are, and gives you a genuine, defensible read in a few minutes if that is all the time you have.

Here is the shape of it.

Answer the maturity assessment at whatever depth you have time for

This is the headline change of the week. A department maturity assessment can run 120 questions. That depth is the point when you are ready for it, but it is a wall when you are not. So the assessment no longer forces a single depth. You choose, pillar by pillar.

A level chooser up front. Quick (answer a whole pillar in two clicks), Balanced (answer by area), or Detailed (question by question). Each shows an estimated time and an honest note about what that depth can and cannot tell you. The chooser sets a starting depth for the whole assessment, and you can still open any single pillar deeper.
The fast way finds the same gaps as the long way, and we measured it. The default is Balanced, answering at the area level, and that is a deliberate, evidence-backed choice. We backtested it against 854 completed assessments: area-level answers reproduce the full, question-by-question gap read exactly. Same priority gaps, in a fraction of the time. Quick (whole-pillar) is labeled honestly as an approximate first pass to refine later, because averaging a whole pillar can dilute a single weak area.
Start shallow, go deep later, without starting over. A coarse answer is carried all the way down: it pre-fills every question underneath it. So a seven-click first pass gives you a real, gap-analyzable result and a fully pre-filled deep survey you can refine whenever you want. The assessment remembers the depth you left each pillar at.

The net effect: you can get a genuine read of where a department stands in a few minutes, and the door to the full-depth version stays open the whole time. The barrier to your first baseline just dropped to almost nothing.

Recognition: CESMII

Visual Decisions' work with CESMII, the National Smart Manufacturing Institute for the USA, is now reflected across the platform: a recognition block in the footer of all three sites, and an updated About page that leads with the value the platform delivers and notes the CESMII relationship in its proper place. The six CESMII Smart Manufacturing dimensions already run through the assessment and the value analysis; this makes the relationship behind that visible.

Edit your answers anytime

A completed assessment is no longer frozen. You can reopen it, revise any answer in place, and re-run the analysis, on every assessment across the platform. Edits update the same response and refresh your priority gap list rather than spawning a duplicate, so your team's shared list stays clean. The thing you assessed in March is a living record, not a one-shot.

Plain-language help on every pillar and every area

Last week every individual question got a help pop-out. This week the level above them did too. Every pillar (169 of them) and every area (535) now has a plain-language explanation behind a help icon, so the new Quick and Balanced depths are answerable without drilling into the questions. Each note restates the section in shop-floor language and frames what low versus high maturity tends to look like, without ever telling you what to answer.

A cleaner, simpler set of assessments

Two pieces of housekeeping that make the assessment list easier to navigate.

The four split assessments are whole again. Operational Excellence, Plant Maintenance, Plant Materials, and Plant IT/OT were each broken across a Part 1 and Part 2. Each is now a single assessment. Existing answers carry over automatically, so nobody loses progress.
The intro quizzes retired. The seventeen short "Start Here" quizzes existed to give a fast first read. The new depth chooser does that better, on the real assessment, so the intros are gone and every "get started" button now points straight at the maturity assessment. Old intro results are still viewable.

Questions, feedback, or want to walk your own maturity assessment at the depth that fits your week? Reply to this email, or hit the Feedback button on any of the sites. We read everything.

— Tim Stuart, Visual Decisions