Excel as a Finite Scheduling Tool
Peter L. King, Mac Jacob, Noel Peberdy · Productivity Press eBooks · 2023
This chapter discusses the Many companies use Excel for production scheduling. Some believe that it is effective, while some realize that it&s;s cumbersome and ineffective but don’t know where to turn. Compared to specialized software, Excel is inefficient for both the scheduler&s;s time and the company&s;s production resources. It&s;s difficult to train a substitute scheduler for vacation or absence coverage. The Planners are stressed because they are afraid to let the organization down if they take time off. A some of the critical things planning software needs to do in order to be effective and consider how well Excel stacks up against them. Most Excel-based scheduling programs use time-bucketed cells with complicated lookup functions and complex formulas. The best graphical scheduling systems allow an immediate understanding of the schedule at a glance. The data related to changeover minutes are summarized. The scheduling software view of the schedule has several rows of data with links to the actions for each entry.