How do Excel spreadsheets affect your planning and scheduling in production?
Excel spreadsheets are widely chosen in most start-up businesses to save costs when they are planning and scheduling their production, just to get by in their manufacturing operations.
What are the main things that can happen when using Excel spreadsheets?
First, Excel tends to be quite an effort to get right and therefore requires a large amount of time to make it work. That makes spreadsheets quite a slow process.
Another thing is that you can easily make mistakes using spreadsheets. This can cause delays in production which can create real business-disrupting problems.
Lastly, a spreadsheet is static data. This means that it needs constant manual updating. This can cause communication issues that result in delays and, again, real business-disrupting problems.
Therefore, if you want your business to run smoothly and not have any major disrupting problems, investing in the right production planning and scheduling software is the way forward.
Typically, a spreadsheet becomes more and more complicated and stays under the control of one person. If that person leaves, the use of the spreadsheet often stops there.
"Almost all start-ups start managing their business with spreadsheets. Somewhere along a company's growth journey, spreadsheets will fail to manage the processes and a proper business system will be needed. It is always easier to put in a system earlier rather than later, so that growth prospects are not disrupted."
James Casserly — Director, Manu Online
