Long lead times in supply chain processes can result in significant tied-up working capital in inventory, limiting operational flexibility and profitability. To address this challenge, we present VAILO, a Visual Analytics Dashboard for Inventory and Logistics Operations, designed to support sales and operations managers in identifying inefficiencies and bottlenecks in supply chain workflows. Developed through a co-design process with domain experts, VAILO integrates two coordinated visualizations—a hierarchical treemap and a throughput diagram—to facilitate the exploration of material flow and lead time variability across industries and customers. The dashboard enables secure data uploads, customizable visual encodings, and interactive filtering to support user-driven analysis. We conducted a formative usability study with participants experienced in industrial contexts and explored a real-world usage scenario. While initial results suggest that VAILO may help surface actionable insights, they also highlight areas for improvement in onboarding and interaction design. Our findings offer a preliminary contribution toward the design of domain-specific visual analytics tools that aim to bridge the gap between complex data and decision-making in supply chain contexts.

Today’s IT and OT infrastructure is threatened by a plethora of cyber-attacks conducted by actors with different motivations and means. Furthermore, the complexity of these exposed systems as well as the adversaries’ sophisticated technical arsenal makes it increasingly difficult to plan and implement an organization’s defense. Understanding the link between specific attacks and effective mitigating measures is particularly challenging – as is understanding the underlying information security concepts. To support the training of current, and more importantly, nascent security engineers, we propose PenQuest, a digital attack and defense game where an attacker attempts to compromise an abstracted IT infrastructure and the defender works to prevent or mitigate the threat. The game is based on MITRE ATT&CK, D3FEND, and the NIST SP 800-53 security standard and incorporates a multitude of concepts such as cyber kill chains, attack vectors, network segmentation, and more. PenQuest is built to support security education and risk assessment and was evaluated with a class of engineering students as well as independent security experts. Initial results show a significant increase in knowledge retention and attest to the game’s feasibility for educational use.