How to Build 5 Practical Supply‑Chain Dashboards in Just 2 Hours

Overview

This guide describes a set of five supply‑chain management dashboards that together provide a full‑chain monitoring hub, covering order fulfillment, material shortage, production progress, inventory health, and supplier performance.

Core Questions to Answer

Which orders have delivery risk today?

What causes these risks – material shortage, capacity, or logistics?

Is the overall supply chain tight or slack this week?

Answering these requires data on orders, procurement, production, inventory, and finance.

Dashboard 1 – Order Fulfilment Overview

Goal: Show leaders the current status of all orders, risk levels, and high‑pressure customers or product lines.

Data: Order table joined with plan/actual completion dates.

Key calculations: Create a delivery_delta = planned delivery – required delivery; colour‑code: >=0 days (green), -1 to -3 days (yellow), < -3 days (red).

Metrics: Order count/amount by status, risk flags, top‑N customers/products, weekly/monthly OTIF (On‑Time‑In‑Full).

Presentation: Large OTIF number, status pie chart, bar chart of order amount by status, risk‑order ranking, filterable detail table.

Dashboard 2 – Material Shortage Alerts

Goal: Detect material shortages 1–2 weeks in advance.

Data: MRP/requirements, current/in‑transit/reserved inventory, open purchase orders with ETA.

Logic: For each critical material compute cover_days = (available + in‑transit) / daily demand or cover_orders = (available + in‑transit) / order quantity. Identify gaps where demand exceeds supply.

Example: 14‑day demand 10,000 pcs, available 7,000 pcs → shortage 3,000 pcs starting on a specific date.

Metrics: Material coverage days/orders, shortage quantity (and value), affected orders/customers.

Dashboard 3 – Production Progress

Goal: Visualise line‑by‑line WIP and bottlenecks, replacing daily queries to supervisors.

Data: Production work orders, stage‑by‑stage progress, planned vs actual output, WIP counts per line.

Metrics: Daily plan vs actual per line, WIP quantity & average dwell time for critical stages, completion rate, weekly cumulative completion trend.

Presentation: Left: plan vs actual bar chart (red for lagging lines); centre: WIP heatmap; right: weekly completion trend line; bottom: order‑drill‑down table.

Dashboard 4 – Inventory Health

Goal: Decompose total inventory into safety stock, excess, and at‑risk items.

Data: Current stock, turnover days, safety/target stock levels, historical in/out records.

Metrics: Total & excess inventory value, turnover distribution by material tier, count/value of items below safety stock.

Presentation: Top: total inventory and dead‑stock values; middle: lists of low‑risk and high‑risk items; side: inventory by category/warehouse.

Dashboard 5 – Supplier Performance

Goal: Show spend distribution, reliability, and risk of each supplier.

Data: Purchase amounts per supplier, on‑time delivery rates, quality pass rates, price trends, overdue orders, payable balances.

Metrics: Supplier spend share (monthly/quarterly/yearly), delivery & quality rates, price volatility, overdue order count/value, aging of payables.

Presentation: Left: top‑10 spenders bar chart; centre: selected supplier details (rates, price trend); right: risk tiering (green/yellow/red); bottom: overdue order list with contacts.

Integration

Combine the five themed dashboards with a central overview page that links to each, forming a complete supply‑chain monitoring hub. The solution is delivered as a reusable template that can be downloaded and customized for specific data sources.