Pages
Stay In Touch
More
Thanks for dropping by! Please connect with me on LinkedIn as well.
© 2007-2010 Tim Lovelock
So says Forbes in ranking Huntsville, AL (where I live and work) #9 on their list of World’s Smartest Cities:
Huntsville, Ala., has long had a “smart” core to its economy–a legacy of its critical role in the NASA ballistic missile program. Today the area’s traditional emphasis on aerospace has been joined by bold moves into such fields as biotechnology. Kiplinger recently ranked the area’s economy No. 1 in the nation.
Microsoft Excel : Create conditional drop-down lists.
I haven’t tried the INDIRECT function in Excel 2003, which is what I’m stuck using at work. Will try on my laptop tomorrow.
One of the parts of material planning that can be frustrating is dealing with imperfect information. There can so many variables it can be impossible to stop variance, but it is possible to control and reduce variation.
Developing rough-cut planning models helps me do this. I need to quickly meld ERP data with observed data and enable intelligent decision-making, so that is the focus of the tools. Once I can model the data, I can drill into the causes of the variance and start down the path toward control.
- VLOOKUP
- IF
- ISERROR
- CONCATENATE
- YEAR
- MONTH
- WEEKNUM
My favorite function mashup is to combine IF, ISERROR, and VLOOKUP to return either a value from another table, or 0 (or blank, if you prefer). Here’s how to do it:
=IF(ISERROR(VLOOKUP([Std vlookup formula])),0,(VLOOKUP([Std vlookup formula])))
Here’s the logic: If the Vlookup returns an error (i.e., the value of the referenced cell does not exist in the lookup range), then return a value of Zero, else return the value found in the lookup range.
Why? It gets rid of those nasty “#N/A” errors.
I don’t tweet a whole lot because it irks me to create content for someone else when I already have my own blog. I get the value of Twitter in bringing people to my site that would not otherwise find me, but I wanted to store my content on my domain in a way that permitted it to indexed and found more directly than having a searcher go through Google. But I also recognize that a lot of people aren’t going to be interested in consuming more Tim, so I wanted to keep the quick-hitter stuff off the home page so it doesn’t bury the more valuable posts that I work for many hours to craft.
So, I thought I’d try an experiment after reading this article:
How to Create Micro Blogs Within WordPress « Weblog Tools Collection.
This post is the first big test.
I’m not giving away any secrets in this post. Material Planning professionals all know that the key to on-time delivery performance is to extend supply chain visibility as far as possible. This is the key to Sales & Operations Planning, but if your company does not have a robust S&OP process, you can still close this loop by inserting yourself and the planning organization in the sales pursuit.
I’ve been involved early in the sales pursuit process several times, as well as had products/programs “thrown over the transom” as they say. I have a simple process I follow to manage the material planning function on those programs where I’ve been involved early. I follow the same process on those “over the transom” programs to place the challenge into perspective for management and the program team so recovery decisions can be made as appropriate. Here it is in a simplified flow chart:
Continue reading »
Powered by FireStats