Download this application. Read more details (PDF|DOC). View screens of this application.

Background: One of Nobilis' clients, a large multi-national firm, used Excel spreadsheets to track progress on product development. Manually added colored symbols and comments alerted management to potential problems. Although timeliness was critical, the system required significant administrative time, was frequently delayed by even a single late response, and was criticized by participants as taking more time than it was worth. Because the retrieval cycle was longer than the required frequency, supervisor review and approval was impossible.

Problems:

• Worksheet with latest vendor delivery schedules e-mailed from central purchasing
• Purchasing data re-keyed into master schedule, then e-mailed to project managers
• Each project manager entered his forecasts and comments, forwarded to next
• After last project manager finished, sheet finally returned to management

Solutions:

• Central purchasing data is automatically entered into database
• Nobilis system picks up latest data, loads into Excel sheets
• System e-mails individualized sheets to all project managers simultaneously
• Based on input, Excel macros color-code status for each item
• Late or delayed returns are chased by the system and alerts issued
• Supervisors automatically receive sheets and approve or return
• Each approved sheet updates the central database
• Combined reports are automatically created and sent to management
• Virtually all administrative effort and routing delays are eliminated

Complexity: 6
Features:

• Filtering data by participants in a distribution group
• Formatting an Excel sheet to display varying lists of records
• Adding color-keyed symbols to the sheet based on calculations

Author: D. Gleason and A. Lake, Nobilis Support staff (contact)

---

Ibis used Nobilis Ci to raise their production output efficiency. More case studies