This Supply Chain Digest article mentions some rules to follow when designing supply chain dashboards. One thing that is not discussed in detail is how important it is to be able to drill down to lower levels of information. An executive may be able to see that service level is lower than desired, but to be able to drill down and see the primary cause makes that knowledge actionable.

If you really want to learn about effective dashboard design, I recommend you read Information Dashboard Design by Stephen Few. By the way, Few's latest blog article talks about the Ambient Orb. We actually integrated the orb into our product at one point but the time lag was too great at the time to be useful. However, the first 5 new customers that buy our product and reference this blog entry will get a free Orb with one integrated alert.