Seven signs your production spreadsheet has become a system
Spreadsheets are the best prototyping tool ever made. These are the signs that yours has quietly turned into a business-critical system, and what to do next.
· 1 min read
Almost every manufacturing system we build starts life as a spreadsheet. That is a good thing: a spreadsheet is the fastest way to prove a process works. The trouble comes when it keeps growing long after it should have become something sturdier.
Here are the signs we look for.
1. More than one person needs to edit it at the same time
Shared workbooks, "who has it open?" messages, and copies saved as Final v3 (Dave's). Once several people depend on the same data, a spreadsheet becomes a queue.
2. Data is typed in twice
If numbers are written on paper or a whiteboard and then typed into Excel, you pay for the same data twice and introduce errors both times.
3. One person understands the formulas
If the workbook would be in trouble when its author is on holiday, it is a single point of failure for your operation.
4. It feeds decisions that cost money
Production plans, quotes, stock orders and customer commitments deserve validation and an audit trail. A mistyped cell should not be able to change a price without anyone noticing.
5. Reporting takes hours
If someone spends a morning each week copying, pasting and pivoting to produce the same report, that report should build itself.
6. It has macros nobody dares touch
VBA that "just works" tends to stop working after an Office update, and there is often no one left who knows why it was written.
7. You have started building a second spreadsheet to manage the first
Lookup sheets, index tabs and linked workbooks are a sign that the problem has outgrown the tool.
What to do about it
You do not need a large software package. The usual answer is a focused, browser-based system that does what the spreadsheet does, with proper multi-user access, validation, history and automatic reports, and an export back to Excel for anyone who still wants one.
The spreadsheet has already done the hard work of proving the process. It becomes the specification. See how we approach spreadsheet replacement, or book a free process review and bring the workbook along.