Author: Roberto Messa
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Comparing ProdCalc with alternatives
When you target small-to-medium manufacturers using spreadsheets, you are not just competing with Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets. You are competing with an entire landscape of alternative solutions—some explicit, others implicit—that operational managers rely on to avoid buying a full enterprise ERP. Here is a breakdown of who and what you are actually competing against:…
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Your Spreadsheet Won’t Warn You About Material Shortages
Many small manufacturers still use spreadsheets as their Material Requirements Planning (MRP) system. It’s understandable why. Spreadsheets are inexpensive, familiar, and flexible enough to organize inventory, production schedules, and customer orders. As the business grows, however, they gradually become responsible for tasks they were never designed to perform. The problem isn’t spreadsheets themselves. The problem…
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Many Small Manufacturers Still Use Spreadsheets as MRP
Many small manufacturing companies still use spreadsheets as their MRP system, and honestly, this is far more common than most people realize. RelatedThe MRP Sharing Platform for Manufacturing Inside many factories, the entire production planning process still depends on Excel files maintained manually by the PPC team. Inventory is controlled in one spreadsheet, BOM structures…
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Why Spreadsheets Fall Short in Production Planning — and How ProdCalc Replaces Them
Spreadsheets have been part of production planning for decades. They are familiar, flexible, and easy to start with. But as manufacturing operations grow, spreadsheets quickly become a source of risk instead of control. Production planning is not just about numbers — it’s about timing, dependencies, materials, inventory, and coordination across teams and suppliers. This is…
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There is a need for Industry players to find each other
Is it easy to find new suppliers? Short answer: no. Cold calls, e-commerce and mouth to mouth is not enough and a system is needed to fill that gap. What would be that system? Short answer: an MRP Sharing Platform! If the industrial consumer could register its product structures, industrial supplier could search them and…