Production in Excel? A Simple System for a Manufacturing Company

Planning production in a spreadsheet genuinely works - until it does not. It usually ends at the first "where is that order?", with three halls, twelve people and five versions of the file. The good news: a system for a manufacturing company does not have to mean a giant ERP costing hundreds of thousands. In this post we show the minimum scope that actually brings order to production, ballpark costs, and what NOT to implement on day one.

How do you know the spreadsheet is no longer enough?

• Nobody knows what stage a given order is at without walking the floor.
• Salespeople promise deadlines by gut feeling, because they cannot see the workload.
• Material shortages surface on the very day the material was supposed to be used.
• The file has several versions and only one person knows which one is current.
• The owner's report is built by hand, in the evenings.

If you tick two or three boxes, the spreadsheet costs you more than you think - we did the maths in your own system instead of Excel.

A system for a manufacturing company: the minimum sensible scope

Four modules are enough to start:

• Production orders - what, how many, for whom and by when; one list instead of emails and sticky notes.
• Stage statuses - an order moves through stages (e.g. cutting, assembly, painting, QA, shipping) and the status changes with one tap on the shop floor.
• Materials and shortages - material reserved per order and an alert when something will be missing before the deadline.
• Deadlines and workload - a simple week view: what fits, what is at risk.

That is all. This scope can be implemented in a matter of weeks, and from day one it answers the question "where is my order?".

What NOT to implement on day one

The biggest risk with a first system is trying to roll out everything at once. Skip these at the start:

• full MRP - automatic material requirements planning,
• automatic scheduling - an algorithm queueing jobs instead of your planner,
• minute-by-minute time tracking,
• integrating with everything at once.

Each of these can be added later, once the core has settled and the team has learned to use it. This is the classic MVP approach - we describe it in how to build an app MVP.

A sample day with the system (a hypothetical scenario)

The description below is an invented, illustrative scenario - not an account of a real deployment. It shows how such a system changes an ordinary working day.

• 6:55 - the foreman opens the order board on a tablet: three orders for today, one with a material alert.
• 9:30 - a salesperson needs a deadline for a new client. Instead of calling the floor, they check the workload view and quote a realistic date.
• 11:00 - an operator finishes a stage and changes the status with one tap; the next station sees the order in its queue.
• 13:00 - the warehouse confirms a delivery; the shortage alert disappears from the order.
• 16:30 - the owner sees the day's summary: what shipped, what slipped and why.

No magic - everyone is simply looking at the same data instead of five versions of a spreadsheet.

Integration with the warehouse and accounting

In stage two the system connects to what you already have: warehouse software, accounting, a B2B store. An order can be created automatically from a customer's purchase, and warehouse documents can follow production statuses. Nobody has to retype data between systems any more. How such connections work technically and what they cost is covered in our post on system integration in a company.

What does it cost and how to stage it?

A dedicated production system in the minimum scope described above is usually a project from PLN 25,000. A simpler variant - just the order board with statuses, without materials and integrations - can fit into a package from PLN 10,000. Maintenance and development after launch is a subscription from PLN 500/month. Full price ranges and cost drivers are in how much a custom app costs, and examples of ERP-class systems in our portfolio.

A sensible staging: stage 1 - orders and statuses, stage 2 - materials and warehouse, stage 3 - integrations and reports. Each stage should work on its own and earn the budget for the next one.

Running production in a spreadsheet and want to know what bringing order to it would cost? Describe your process in our quote calculator - you will see a ballpark price range on the spot, get a first reply within 24 hours, and receive a binding quote after a short call about your shop floor.