Transportation Performances Measures and Metrics: Overall Transportation Effectiveness (OTE): A Framework, Prototype and Case Study

Transportation is essential to global economy. Nevertheless, Logistic Service Provisioning (LSP) is an industry with typically low margins. Competition is fierce and processes often inefficient, one example being a high percentage of empty miles (for trucks) resulting in unnecessary costs. Collaboration and better information exchange between LSPs and their supply chain partners are perceived to be essential in reducing empty miles. As a basis for collaboration initiatives, it is important to identify how LSPs currently perform. There is an urgent need for performance measurement. Business Intelligence (BI) matured over recent years and provides methods and tools for the construction of performance measurement dashboards. Still, LSPs struggle to identify accurate and effective performance indicators and face difficulties to implement these in a BI dashboard. To address this problem, we follow a design science approach to develop an Overall Transportation Effectiveness (OTE) framework using an extensive literature analysis and an analysis of current performance measurement practices. The OTE framework is implemented in a BI dashboard, which we piloted and evaluate in the Dutch branch of one of Europe´s largest LSPs. The paper concludes with a discussion of our findings and an outlook on potential future work.