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Setting Customer Service Levels… Without Managing Stock Levels
Setting service levels usually starts with inventory.
Here’s a way to improve supply for important customers, that doesn’t involve inventory sizing.
And it doesn’t involve production either…
Sort Out Your Customer Orders
In times of shortage, how do you allocate inventory to customer orders?
It is tempting to fall back on hard allocation. This could be a mistake.
Here’s why. With a download simulation to prove it.
Five Things You Need To Know About Forecasting
Here are five things you need to know about forecasting.
This is a statistics-free zone. Five forecasting principles for demand planning.
Get an Instant Rating for your Excel Planning
How does your Excel planning measure up?
Are you getting the best results or are you suffering from Excel hell?
Here is a simple measurement and a download tool that can give you an instant rating on your planning tools built with spreadsheets.
Here’s An Excel Method That Every Planner Should Know
This is a core method to apply the Fast Excel Development Method in building a planning and scheduling system in Excel.
Convert forecasts, explode demand and generate work orders — this method is something that every planner should know.
A Two-Letter Word Will Change The Way You Look At Scheduling
Is the purpose of production scheduling to feed MRP and execution?
If you’re satisfied with this answer, then you’re missing something. A small, two-letter word will change the way you look at scheduling.
How to Share Excel Data in the Cloud
We build planning and scheduling systems in Excel.
Some systems like this material planning example have more than one user, in different locations.
Here is a way to share Excel data across multiple users by using a simple cloud service.
How To Plan for Long Lead-Time Materials
The biggest headache in material planning is long lead-time materials.
Here is a simple tool that gives visibility between a buyer and a factory separated by a lot of water.
Also see an easy trick to connect multiple Excel users on different continents with free data integration over the cloud.
Scheduling Job Shops and Engineer-to-Order – Three Alternatives that can Work
Job shop production is a challenge for scheduling.
Three ideas to job shop scheduling and other customized products when you have no standard process data.
The Most Useful Excel Function You Will Ever Learn
I would like to introduce the most useful function that Excel has to offer.
This is the most widely used Excel function in the Fast Excel Method. When building planning systems, I find myself typing this in formulas more than any other function.
The function can transform Excel spreadsheets into a fully-blown business software platform. We use it to retrieve data, perform calculations and present them in a report.
The Reality of Your Manufacturing World
Represent your manufacturing business using master data. Link the planning and scheduling system to the real world.
Excel-based planning systems give you more flexibility. Flexibility within the realms of the possible. Here are the essentials of master data and how they map onto your business.
The Secret Trick that Turns Excel into a Flexible Business System
ERP often fails to give you the flexibility and visibility that you need.
Excel use has its own problems with spreadmarts and spreadsheet sin.
Apply this technique and take control over your planning and reporting. Getting Excel to perform like a business system.
Kick-Start Your Capacity Planning
The most common mistake that planners make with capacity planning, and how to fix it.
Some tips on how to get good visibility on capacity in a high-mix production factory.
Download our free Capacity Planning Tool and load it with your own production data.
Uncertainty and the Predictive Power Of Planning
Predictive planning provides a way to manage uncertainty. Planning can resolve the dilemma between schedule-push and demand-pull.
How an Excel-based predictive planning tool can work alongside the business transaction system.
Capacity Planning Tool
Here is a Capacity Planning Tool to download, test and run with your own data.
You can see your work orders from sales, compare with available capacity. Gives you instant visibility on production capability and constraints.
How Calendars Fix Your Capacity in Planning and Scheduling
This is a guide to help you use calendars in planning and scheduling.
Production capacity starts with calendars – here’s how to make a calendar and calculate in Excel.
Easy Date Calculations When Planning With Excel
Capacity planning compares minutes of production with days of resources. Here is an easy way to convert minutes to days over any working calendar.
This technique also helps to simplify many Excel date calculations for working days and times.
A Simple Truth About Capacity Planning
“It was easy to see where they were going wrong…”
A short story and a simple truth about capacity planning.
Also a chance to give us feedback and get free access to the right capacity planning tool for your business.
Seven Habits for Highly Effective Excel Planning
Happy new year! A time for planning and new year resolutions.
Ouch. The word “Resolutions” doesn’t give you good feelings, does it?
I prefer habits -form them and it takes effort to break them. Here are seven good habits for using Excel for planning.