I would like to conduct a little experiment. To explain why, I’d like to tell you a story.
Before we start: There is a download of a new Excel MRP tool. It is free and fully functional. but it is only available to people who attend a webinar and learn how to use it. We have many downloads of planning and scheduling tools that you can get for free. Why limit the availability of this one?
I would like to tell you why.
This website Production-Scheduling.com was born in May 2000. I got involved in 2010. There have been 20 years of content about planning and scheduling for manufacturing.
Every so often, we get an email from someone. This is usually a subscriber who has been following us. Or someone who has bought the e-Learning. They downloaded one of our free tools, learnt the methods, made something happen.
I’m encouraged by the stories that they tell.
One person was nominated for a company-wide award in one of the world’s largest privately-held companies. Someone else built a consulting business around our methods. Another used it in their PhD research. Yet another was hired into their dream job.
Each person worked hard and achieved something of which they were very proud. I’m happy that our methods played some role in their success.
The trouble is, a lot of these stories happened years back. We never got to hear about them at the time. Only by chance, years later.
I think we have been OK at sharing our content. Not so good at following up. 61,727 downloads (actually many more, those are the ones I can easily count). but only with a small fraction, do we get any sense of how much value they created.
This is a business. But it also is a calling. One of the primary reasons we do this is to help people with planning and make a difference. And I feel we are failing in that mission if we never get to hear about the majority of successes. It’s obvious when you think about it.
So, here are a couple of things to change that. First the experiment:
We have a new MRP tool in Excel. And would like to give it to download for free. BUT, we want to be sure that people learn how to use it. This way they can get the best chance to get started with it. So, for the next 90 days, we are sharing it only with webinar attendees.
It is a straight-forward MRP tool. It can scale to 10+ BOM levels, 1000’s products and parts, 10,000’s demand records. It takes demand from the forecast and sales orders. Combines them into one picture of demand. Then explodes through the Bill of Materials, deducting from inventory at each level.
The result is a clear picture of what items need to be ordered, what quantity and due-date. So that supply is maintained to the customer.
This tool is built entirely in Excel. Is unlocked and open. It runs on-demand, in seconds. This is a serious, enterprise-grade tool, similar ones are used to plan factories doing many $millions a month.
Here is the webinar. We will show you how it works and how to set it up with your data. Whether it gets installed as the main material planning system. Or piloted with data. We just want to know if you can use it and get a result.
Doing MRP in Excel
Tuesday, 23 June
1pm UK time, [GMT+1] – (2pm CET, 6.30pm India, 8pm China, 8am Eastern)
45 minutes + Q&A
The webinar recordings and downloads are here: https://production-scheduling.com/doing-mrp-in-excel-subscribers-page/
We will record the session, however only attendees will get the download. If this time is not good for your timezone, then please contact me at [email protected] and let me know. We can easily schedule another session at a different time.
Secondly, if you have a story about how you got value from our content – and willing to share with me – then please email me at [email protected]. A couple of sentences or a long story, whatever you can share. Naturally, everything is confidential unless you clearly tell us otherwise.
I hope to be learning about more stories about how people use our tools and methods for better planning and scheduling in Excel.