PRODUCTION PLANNING

[Guest]

We currently use Excel for entering orders onto our system, however I need a
form or something to be able to plan the production through the factory
properly. Is there anything in Excel or Access that will help me do this,
preferably by taking the info off another list, as we don't have/use any
other packages to do this?

 

[Dirk Goldgar]

We currently use Excel for entering orders onto our system, however I
need a form or something to be able to plan the production through
the factory properly. Is there anything in Excel or Access that will
help me do this, preferably by taking the info off another list, as
we don't have/use any other packages to do this?

I'm confident Access can do this, but you don't describe what you need
in enough detail for me to suggest how you might set it up. Depending
on how complicated your needs are, this could be a small job or a big
job, and could require very little real programming or a lot. If you'd
like to describe what the process requires in more detail, maybe someone
here can give you more specific help.

 

[Guest]

I need to be able to receive an order, enter it into Excel (because that's
how it's done at the moment) giving a lead time of 4-6 weeks, and then for
the product info to go onto another list/table to plan the work through the
factory. I'll need to be able to see product/description, qty, customer/site,
lead time, etc. with a view to produce this week and deliver the next.

 

[Dirk Goldgar]

I need to be able to receive an order, enter it into Excel (because
that's how it's done at the moment) giving a lead time of 4-6 weeks,
and then for the product info to go onto another list/table to plan
the work through the factory. I'll need to be able to see
product/description, qty, customer/site, lead time, etc. with a view
to produce this week and deliver the next.

If I were designing this from scratch, I wouldn't use Excel for my data
entry; I'd set it all up in Access. That said, you can continue to use
Excel to enter your orders if you really want to, and set up an Access
database to link to that Excel worksheet for input. It would be better
all in Access, though, since you can set up a structure of tables that
are related to each other (Customers, Products, and Orders, for example)
and enforce that relationship, such that every customer and product
listed in an order are represented in the Customers and Products tables,
respectively.

Using Access, you can set up forms for data entry and for quick lookup
of summary or detail information about customers, products, or orders,
as well as viewing status of orders. You could design various reports
to give you hard-copies of whatever information you need. If you became
familiar with how to use Access's full abilities, you could easily
develop ad-hoc queries to extract any information you want.

However, this doesn't come with a snap of the fingers. If you're
planning to build this yourself from scratch, you should be aware that
Access has a much steeper learning curve than Excel, and it will take
you time, study, and a certain amount of trial and error to get the
application built exactly the way you want it. If you're planning to
hire an experienced Access developer to build it, you should be prepared
to spend anywhere from $500 to $2000 -- that's just a very rough guess,
since I don't know the details of your operation.

On the other hand, Microsoft as pre-built a number of "template"
applications for users of the various Office programs, which you can
download and adapt to your needs. There's one on this page:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/CT011366681033.aspx

called "Customer orders database", which may be the sort of thing you're
looking for. I haven't looked at it, but the name sure sounds
promising, doesn't it?

 

[Dirk Goldgar]

On the other hand, Microsoft as pre-built a number of "template"
applications for users of the various Office programs, which you can
download and adapt to your needs. There's one on this page:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/CT011366681033.aspx

called "Customer orders database", which may be the sort of thing
you're looking for. I haven't looked at it, but the name sure sounds
promising, doesn't it?

And I see another called "Orders management database", which also sounds
relevant.