Visualizing Humanitarian Logistics Performance

Abstract

Logistics management is crucial for the effectiveness and efficiency of humanitarian operations. Performance measurement enables practitioners to identify improvement potentials and management capabilities with regards to their logistics management tasks. While many performance measurement approaches for humanitarian logistics exist in the scientific domain, its applicability in the practitioner communities is rather low. Main reasons for this mismatch can be seen in rather few ready-to-use concepts and supporting information systems. In this article, the design, development, and evaluation of an information system for a Balanced Scorecard for humanitarian logistics is presented. The approach is embedded in the design science research framework following the agile programming methodology. The main characteristics of the server client architecture are described and reflected through experiences from formative and summative evaluations. The results stress the importance of the applied design approaches and support the closing of gaps between information systems designers and humanitarian practitioners.