use excel as a map for inventory control
 

The company I'm with had no inventory control. Two people new the location
of most 5,000 parts in the plant. I used two workbook sheets, sheet1 called
Layout uses very small square cells to make a North South East West map of
the plant. Walk ways, two cells wide, are filled yellow. Shelves 20 feet long
are 1 x 6 cells long bordered and merged. The plant area is 200 x 400 feet
with 40 shelves on the floor, 3/4 of the plant can be viewed on the screen.
The second sheet (Locator) is still layed out like a map but much bigger,
this is were the inventory part numbers are put in cells on shelves. A shelf
may be 24 standared cells high and 40 cells wide. The shelf has a heavy
border with dotted borders within to indicate shelf seperations. Outside the
heavy border you will see text as to the shelf height i.e. Top, Middle,
Bottom. At the top corners of the shelves there is a cell that are
hyperlinked to the shelf location on sheet 1, the Layout sheet. When looking
for a part go to Edit, Find, put in the part number, enter, the cell with the
part is highlighted, scroll to see the shelf height, hyperlink to the layout
sheet and.... that's it. Anyone who can read a map can find a part. I can
send you what I've done, a lot of people think it's pretty cool and never
thought to use Excel this way. I really think Microsoft is the best and if
you would be interested in employing someone who thinks outside the box let
me know.

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