MGMT 8525M Week 6 Dashboard Critique Example

Twelve Tiles, Three Decisions: A Dashboard Critique of a Distribution Center's Operations Screen, Tracing Each Tile to a Decision It Could Inform and Asking Which Decisions Actually Changed Last Quarter

Student Name

Walden University

MGMT 8525M: Big Data Decision Making and Management

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Twelve Tiles, Three Decisions: A Dashboard Critique of a Distribution Center's Operations Screen, Tracing Each Tile to a Decision It Could Inform and Asking Which Decisions Actually Changed Last Quarter

The Dashboard

The operations dashboard at Brannock Logistics' Columbus distribution center, a composite third-party warehouse serving three apparel brands, runs on two wall screens in the shift office and on every supervisor's tablet. It shows twelve tiles, numbered here left to right and top to bottom: (1) units picked per hour, by picker; (2) units picked per hour, site total; (3) orders shipped today against plan; (4) on-time shipment percentage, rolling seven days; (5) dock door utilization; (6) inbound trailers waiting; (7) inventory accuracy from cycle counts; (8) mispick rate; (9) labor hours against budget; (10) safety incidents this month; (11) a weather feed; and (12) a carbon emissions estimate per shipment. The center's general manager asked whether the dashboard was worth the $46,000 a year it costs in licenses and analyst time.

Decisions Listed First

Howard (1966) argued in his theory of information value that information has value only to the extent that it could change a decision, and that its value can be estimated by comparing the expected outcome of deciding with and without it. Following that logic, the critique began not with the tiles but with the decisions the center's managers make each day and week: how to assign pickers to zones, when to call in overtime or send people home, which inbound trailers to unload first, when to escalate a carrier delay to the client and when to pull a picker off the floor for retraining. Interviews with the general manager and four shift supervisors produced this list.

The Tile Register

[after]

Five tiles, numbers 3, 4, 6, 7 and 10, have a threshold, an owner and evidence that someone acted on them. Four have a plausible decision but no threshold. Three, numbers 5, 11 and 12, connect to no decision anyone at the site makes.

Table 1

Dashboard Tiles, the Decisions They Could Inform and Evidence of Use, Third Quarter 2025

Ornamental Tiles

The three tiles with no decision are ornamental in the sense that no outcome at the center would differ if they disappeared. The emissions tile was added at a client's request for its sustainability report, which draws on a quarterly file rather than the dashboard. These tiles are not harmful in themselves, but every tile competes for attention on a screen that supervisors glance at during a busy shift.

When the Tile Becomes the Target

Campbell (1979) observed that an indicator leaned on heavily to steer decisions comes under pressure to be gamed, and that the pressure warps the very activity the indicator was meant to track. Ridgway (1956) had earlier documented how performance measures in organizations produced dysfunctional behavior when people worked to the measure. Tile 1 shows this happening. Since supervisors began using picks per hour by picker in weekly coaching, the mispick rate on tile 8 has risen from 0.21 percent to 0.34 percent, and pickers report skipping the scan check on multi-unit picks to keep their numbers up. The picks-per-hour tile now partly drives the behavior it reports.

Evidence of Use

Over the quarter, the dashboard informed about 30 recorded actions, almost all from five tiles. Those five could be served by a single smaller screen, with tile 1 shown as a team figure and paired with the mispick rate.

Design Comments

The weather and emissions tiles should be removed from the operations screen. Thresholds should be set for tiles 2, 8 and 9 or the tiles removed.

Limits

Evidence of use relies on recorded decisions and interviews; some informal actions may have gone unrecorded.

References

Campbell, D. T. (1979). Assessing the impact of planned social change. Evaluation and Program Planning, 2(1), 67-90. https://doi.org/10.1016/0149-7189(79)90048-X

Howard, R. A. (1966). Information value theory. IEEE Transactions on Systems Science and Cybernetics, 2(1), 22-26. https://doi.org/10.1109/TSSC.1966.300074

Ridgway, V. F. (1956). Dysfunctional consequences of performance measurements. Administrative Science Quarterly, 1(2), 240-247. https://doi.org/10.2307/2390989