Expert: Arthur Naman - 6/9/2008

Question
We carry circa 25 products.
Each product needs to be processed in 2-3 stages. circa 20 minutes/stage.
Raw materials come in several times a month. However for some products the raw materials are readily available while for others 1-2 months are necessary.
Each product is packaged differently.
Each consignment consists of a product mix. (between 1 and 25)
There are circa 5 large customers (2000 products/month) , 5 medium ones (200/month) and 10 small ones (20/month). (but none of these order every single month). At the moment most customers need to wait circa 2 months but the planning must be improved as sometimes an order can be fulfilled in 2 days.

I need to:

  1. provide future delivery dates to customers
  2. plan work shifts (1-4 people)
  3. plan which products to produce (from planned arrival date of raw material. I know 2-3 weeks in advance)
  4. plan quantities to produce for each run. (At the moment we run 5-10 products a day)
  5. optional-prepare some production benchmarks (per shift and per product). i have a vague idea though.
  6. optional- calculate true cost per order ( in terms of matrials + man hours)


What should i use (on a limited budget) ??

   * Excel template ?
   * Access template ?
   * online solution ?
   * Anything else?

Many thanks,
Nil  

Answer
I am not aware of any "off the shelf" software like Quickbooks or Peachtree which will work to your exact specifications. With that said, there might be add-on software which works with Quickbooks or Peachtree which will work.

Excel or Access could likely be programmed to work. Access is more difficult to work with, but is likely better suited to your needs. With either Excel or Access someone will have to be hired to do the work -- that might not be cheap.

I am not aware of an on-line solution, although some might exist.

The least expensive solution might be to develop Excel spreadsheets. It would be easier to do this if they do not have to be linked. In other words, break down the whole into tasks, develop a spreadsheet for each task.

Hope this helps.

Arthur Naman
Austin, TX