In Manufacturing, Mining and many other industries, bulk commodities are received or delivered in batches or parcels of various sizes and with various properties.
Businesses are often required to schedule the usage of these commodities in quantities which differ from the deliveries. Often commodities are used on a First In First Out (FIFO) basis, or they may be scheduled to meet certain input qualities, ie: Constant or Min/Max of an input quality.
This post will give some basic ideas for this type of scheduling within Excel.
Scheduling First in First Out Usage
Unlike my previous posts, this post will not be walking the reader through the actual scheduling or setup of the worksheet, but will look at each section of the scheduling process and discuss the relevant points where appropriate with reference to the implementation in Excel.
The Scheduling Workbook, Page Sched1 shows a simple FIFO schedule using an Iron Ore mine as an example.
Each section below is highlighted in the sample workbook.
Section 1. Inputs
Various parcels of Iron Ore are presented in order of delivery to a plant or as mined.
Each parcel is of a different sizes (Tonnage) as well as having various qualities of 3 different properties, namely the Iron (Fe), Silicon (Si) and Aluminum (Al) content. These are expressed as percentages but could be Kg/t etc.
Parcels may further be categorized as High, Medium or Low Grade.
From a production point of view it is important to know how much feed is required to meet a certain output from a process or what the quality of mixtures will be.
Section 2. Production Schedule
The mine/plant has a production schedule, ie: a quantity of Iron Ore that it is expected to mine or process every month. The schedule may have ups/down to reflect shutdowns, holidays, changes in rosters/workforce etc.
Section 3. Schedule
This part does the mechanics of the actual scheduling, allocating parcels of each block until the monthly requirement is met.
In operation it takes the minimum of the size of each parcel minus what has already been processed from that parcel or the production requirement minus what has already been processed that month.
This is done using a simple Min and Sum formula.
Example: K18: =MIN($C18-SUM($I18:J18),K$6-SUM(K$9:K17))
Conditional formatting is used to highlight the cell as a scheduled cell (tonnes > 0)
Example: Conditional Formatting, Cell Value > 0
Section 4. Reporting
Reporting can be prepared for Month by month production, Cumulative from the start or Remaining until the end.
Sum and Sumproduct formula are used to calculate weighted average for elemental grades as you have the quantity of each parcel, each month and the associated grades in the input areas.
Example: Cumulative %Fe in April 10, K36: =SUMPRODUCT(K$10:K$31,$E$10:$E$31)/K$35
More complex Sumproduct formula are used to report by various classifications.
Examples:
Used High grade tonnage in march, J53: =SUMPRODUCT(1*($D$10:$D$31=$I52),(J$10:J$31))
Used Medium grade %Fe in April 10, K59: =IF(K58>0,SUMPRODUCT(1*(($D$10:$D$31)=$I57)*(K$10:K$31),($E$10:$E$31))/K$58,0)
Section 5. Charting
Having produced a schedule and associated reports you now have a large amount of data which can be plotted to suit requirements.
The Next Step
Once a schedule has been achieved you can feed the production quantities directly into a budget or other downstream system as required.
Scheduling Random or Planned Usage to Achieve Goals
Although the above example, Sched1, is simplistic, First In First Out schedules can and are used in real life. However often some degree of stockpiling is allowed.
This means that parcels can be used in a different order to which they are delivered.
Often this is done so that the input quality of the feed source is varied or maintained, ie Averaged at a level, maintained below or above a level or maximised or minimized according to constraints.
The Scheduling example file, page Sched2 offers a simple manual way to account for this.
Sched2 varies from Sched1 in that it allows manual selection of the order in which parcels are processed.
This is done by simply allowing the user to specify which order parcels will be treated.
The spreadsheet then does all the work with the added benefit of tracking stockpile levels, as often these must be maintained at certain levels.
The spreadsheet has the same reporting and charting functions available as in Sched1.
Summary
In both the examples the scheduling is done using simple, Sum’s, Min and Max formulas.
The actual scheduled production is highlighted using conditional formatting.
The reporting is done using Sum and Sumproduct formulas.
In both examples adjust the values in the various Yellow cells and watch the scheduled tonnages and qualities change.
Next
The purpose of this post was simply to introduce the reader to simple options for scheduling.
It is clear that you now have a simple process from which to derive inputs to a budget, tracking and prediction reports
The post doesn’t attempt to go anywhere near optimization of the schedule using linear programming or other techniques.
However you can see that the addition of Excel solver may be possible to attempt to balance or minimise or maximise outputs, but this is beyond this simple example.
Functions Used:
Min: =Min(Range) returns the Minimum number from the Range
Max: =Max(Range) returns the Maximum number from the Range
Sum: =Sum(Range) adds the values in the Range
If: =If(Condition, Do this if condition is true, Do this if condition is false)
Sumproduct: http://chandoo.org/wp/2009/11/10/excel-sumproduct-formula/
How do you Schedule your production scenarios? Let us all know in the comments below:
Next week: Word Art – Yes it has a use !
31 Responses to “Beautiful Budget vs. Actual chart to make your boss love you”
Would be considerably easier just to have a table with the variance shown.
On Step 3, how do you "Add budget and actual values to the chart again"?
There are a few ways to do it.
Easy:
1) Copy just the numbers from both columns (Select, CTRL+C)
2) Select the chart and hit CTRL+V to paste. This adds them to chart.
Traditional:
1) Right click on chart and go to "select data..."
2) From the dialog, click on "Add" button and add one series at a time.
One more way to accomplish it is just select the columns into chart. Press Ctrl+C and then press Ctrl+V
Regards
Neeraj Kumar Agarwal
Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to work for me in Excel 2010. The "Var 1" and "Var 2" columns cannot combine two fonts to display the symbol and the figure side-by-side.
Secondly, there is no option to Click on “Value from cells” option when formatting the label options. The only options provided are Series Name, Category Name or Value.
@TheQ47... the emoji font also has normal English letters, so if you use that font, then you should be ok. I am assuming your computer doesn't have that font or hasn't been upgraded for emoji support.
Reg. Excel 2010, you can manually link each label to a cell value. Just select one label at a time (click on labels, wait a second, click on an individual label) and press = and link it to the label var 1 or var 2.
I am using excel 2010, please explain how to apply Step 12
Regards
Neeraj Kumar Agarwal
Hi Neeraj,
"Value from cells" option is only available in Excel 2013 or above. In older versions, you have to manually adjust the label value by linking each label seperately.
Read this please: https://chandoo.org/wp/change-data-labels-in-charts/
Sir, you are just awesome.
Your creativity has no limit.
Regards
Neeraj Kumar Agarwal
Hi Chandoo,
I just found your website, and really love it. It helps me a lot to be an Excel expert 😉
Currently I am facing with a problem at step 11:
Var1 Var2
D30%
A5%
B0%
B4%
B7%
C10%
C13%
D27%
I42%
Though at mapping table, I used windings, here formula uses calibra. How I can change it? I am able to change only the whole cell. In this case numbers will be Windings too.
Thanks for your help!
Hi Mariann... Welcome to Chandoo.org and thanks for your comment.
If you wanted to use symbols from wingdings and combine them with % numbers, then you need to setup two labels. One with symbol, in wingdings font and another with value in normal font. Just add the same series again to the chart, make it invisible, add labels. You may need to adjust the alignment / position of label so everything is visible.
[…] firs article explains how you can enhance your charts with symbols. You can simply insert any supported symbol into your data and charts. To some extend you can […]
You're a good person, thank you to share your knowledge with us, I will try to do in my work
Great visualization of variance. My question is that is this possible in powerbi?
How would you go about it?
HELLO, WHY CANT I FIND VALUES FOR LABELS IN EXCEL 2013
Dear chanddo sir,
What to do if we have dynamic range for Chart. How this will work. can you able to make the same thing works on dynamic range.
Sir Chandoo,
Good Day!
First, I'd like to say that I am very grateful for your work and for sharing all these things with us.
I tried to do this chart but it seems that the symbols don't work with text (abs(var%),"0%") unless we keep the Windings font style.
The problem is, it converts the text into symbol as well and you wont see the 0% anymore. I'm using Windows 7.
WOW - Segoe UI Emoji
This is the greatest discovery for me this month 🙂 Thanks for sharing.
Here's my two-cents:
https://wmfexcel.com/2019/02/17/a-compelling-chart-in-three-minutes/
Sir This is awesome chart, and very easy to made because of your way to explain is very simple , everyone can do. Thank you
one problem i am facing, I hv made this chart , but when i am inserting data table to chart it is showing two times , how can i resolve this
in this chart when i am adding new month data for example first i made this chart jan to mar but when i add data for the apr month graphs updated automatically but labels are missing for that new month
Hi Renuka,
Please make sure the formulas for labels are also calculated for extra months. Just drag down the series and set label range to appropriate address.
So I am playing with the Actual chart here - but amounts are bigger than your - you have 600 as Budget - my budget is 104,000 - is there a way to shorten that I am unaware of
thank you - I LOVE YOUR SITE
Thanks for the tips and tricks on Excel. In the Planned versus Actual chart examples, you use multiple values (ex. multiple Categories in above). How can this be done when we have only 1 set of values? For example if I have only this:
Planned Actual
SOW Budget 417480 367551
How can I create a single bar chart like the one above?
Thank you Chandoo.
This one is just perfect for my Quarterly Review presentation on Operational Budget against Actual Performance for the Hospital I'm currently working with.
Just Subscribed today (10 minutes ago)
Is there a way to make the table of data into a pivot table to be able to add a slicer for the graph due to many different categories and months?
Hi, I tried to modify you template with something appropriate for me, and I found a problem. this template was modified by me started with excel 2010, then 2016 and finally 2019. Same thing - somehow appear an error - or didn't show the emoticons for positive percentage or doubled the emoticons for some rows. I suspect to be from excel. if is need it I can sand you my xlsx for study. Please help if you can.
Hi Chandoo,
Could you please check the Var Formula in Step1. You have mentioned budget-actual and when i did this i got different values but when reversed like actual-budget i got the actual value what you have demonstrated in step1.
Please share your view.
This is a great chart (budget vs. actual). However, in trying recreate it, I cannot color in the UP Down bars individually, and they all become formatted with the same color. I'm using Office 365. Look forward to the feedback.
Thanks.
Dan
pls explain in detail step 7
While in the Excel sheet you have used following formula for Var
Var = Actual - Budget
But
in the note, you have written
Var = Budget - Actual
Good Presentation and Data information.thank you so much chandoo.