Why are successful companies moving away from planning in Excel?

Still using Excel as your standard tool for factory planning? If so, you're falling behind.There's no doubt Excel is a powerful tool — it enables calculations, data analysis and report creation. All of us, amateurs or professionals, have used it. But aren't we held hostage by its simplicity and versatility?The market and industry are increasingly challenging, whether due to supply chain volatility, rising costs, ever more demanding customers or more aggressive competition. Not every tool is capable of answering these challenges.As practical as Excel can be, it has its limitations — limitations that cost companies time and money, such as:

• Scale limitations: Excel has restrictions on the amount of data and formulas it can handle. This can be a problem for large factories or those with a wide variety of products.
• Human error: Excel is prone to human errors such as typing mistakes or badly designed formulas. This can lead to inaccurate or inefficient production plans.
• Collaboration difficulties: Excel can be hard to use in teams because users can easily overwrite or modify each other's data.

So how are many successful companies doing something so complex? They invest in innovation and digitalization of their systems and bet on advanced, specialized solutions for production planning and scheduling — namely SIEMENS Opcenter APS, formerly Preactor. And why choose Opcenter APS?

Easily integrated with any ERP or data source

How much time do you spend looking for information? Searching through spreadsheets and Excel files, looking for hidden tables, making calls or sending emails asking for information? Opcenter can extract order, date, routing and bill-of-materials information directly from the source — whether it's the ERP, the MES or even Excel files used by various areas. This ensures you always have the most up-to-date information and saves time on tasks that won't add value.

Processing Power and Responsiveness

Opcenter APS not only handles large data volumes but also uses advanced algorithms to generate accurate production plans, taking into account machine capacities, routings, bills of materials, labor usage, tooling and other specific rules. All of this is done in seconds or minutes.

Simulation and Visibility

Orders that are changed at the last minute, machine breakdowns, incorrect inventories that surprise us when material is missing at production time, sudden absenteeism increases. We've all faced some of these situations — if not all of them! Unfortunately they're more recurring than we'd like. With Opcenter APS we can quickly see the impacts of these changes on the plan. We can see, for example, which orders will be delayed. We can easily calculate and compare different scenarios and figure out the best alternative to minimize the impacts.Excel may be a practical tool that, at small scale, can work for factory planning. However, as factories get more complex and the market becomes more challenging, Excel becomes less and less suitable for the task.SIEMENS Opcenter APS software offers a range of features that make it ideal for production planning at any scale and any manufacturing industry, with proven results in cost reduction, better resource utilization and productivity increases.Don't let your company fall behind — get in touch with NEO to learn more or to request a free demo!