Case Study on Environmental Scanning

This case study shows how environmental scanning is applied to Egyptian wheat crop production. Note the use of different techniques to deal with the uncertainty of the various environmental factors in producing and marketing wheat crops.

4. Case Study: The Egyptian Wheat Crop Production

4.2. The summary of the structural analysis consensus results:

In the structural analysis phase, there are three major steps: list the wildcards, describe the relationship between them, and identify the keys. 

  • Step A. Listing the Wildcards:

In this step, all wildcards that are coming from the PESTEL and SWOT analysis are listed. There are important twelve wildcards, which are: Global temperature, Global economic goes up, World financial crises, Economical instability in Egypt, Dissemination of the Epidemic diseases, Major overseas transportation accidents, Major natural catastrophic events, Significant pollution increasing, Bad weather conditions, Climatic change in the Egyptian Delta, the Governmental view for the self-sufficiency of the Wheat production, and Water scarcity. These drivers/wildcards take consensus weights from 75% to 95% in the PESTEL analysis. 

  • Step B. Relationships Description 

The MICMAC E-RT-Delphi attempts to discover the relationships among wildcards. The following table shows the input matrix of this step. Note: (high relation = 2, low relation =1 and no relation= 0). 

  • Step C. Key Drivers Identification 

This step consists of identifying the key wildcards, which are essential to the Wheat production development, first by using direct classification (easy to set up), then through indirect classification by RTDelphi MICMAC model. This indirect classification is obtained after increasing the matrix power to the power7 (based on the literature). The consensus results of the structural analysis shows that: Water scarcity, Governmental view for the self-sufficiency of the Wheat production, the Climatic change in the Egyptian Delta, and the World financial crises are the key wildcard events for the future of Egyptian wheat production. Displaying the future scenarios numerical report and figures may help policy/ decision makers in MOT in anticipating the most important future drivers and enhance the quality of future strategic plan.