ABC analysis is a popular technique to understand and categorize inventories. Imagine you are handling inventory at a plant that manufactures high-end super expensive cars. Each car requires several parts (4,693 to be exact) to assemble. Some of these parts are very costly (say few thousand dollars per part), while others are cheap (50 cents per part). So how do you make sure that your inventory tracking efforts are optimized so that you waste less time on 50 cent parts & spend more time on costly ones?
This is where ABC analysis helps.
We group the parts in to 3 classes.
- Class A: High cost items. Very tight control & tracking.
- Class B: Medium cost items. Tight control & moderate tracking.
- Class C: Low cost items. No or little control & tracking.
Given a list of items (part numbers, unit costs & number of units needed for assembly), how do we automatically figure which class each item belongs to?
And how do we generate below ABC analysis chart from it?
That is what we are going to learn. So grab your inventory and follow along.
(related: ABC Analysis page on Wikipedia)
ABC Analysis using Excel – Step by step tutorial
1. Arrange the inventory data in Excel
Pull all the inventory (or parts) data in to Excel. Your data should have at least these columns.
- Part Name
- Unit cost
- # of units (if this is blank, just type 1 in all rows)
Once the data is in Excel, turn it in to a table by pressing CTRL+T. Lets call our data as inventory. You can set the table name from Design tab.
(Related: Introduction to Excel Tables)
2. Calculate extra columns needed for ABC classification
Now comes the fun part. Crunching the inventory data with formulas. Yummy!
Total Cost: This is just a multiplication of unit cost & # of units columns
Rank: We need to figure out what rank each total cost is (in the total cost column). We can use RANK formula for this.
=RANK([@[Total Cost]],[Total Cost],0) will tell us the rank for each total cost.
Cumulative Units: Once we know the rank of each item, next we need to figure out how many total units are needed for items ranked less or equal.
For example, The number (#) of the third part (PT3959-waes) is 3. Cumulative units for this is 91. This means, 91 is the total number of units for first three ranked parts (parts # 8, 9, and 16).
The formula for this is, =SUMIFS(['# Units],[Rank],"<="&[@['#]])
Remember, [@[‘#]] refers to running numbers (1,2,3….4692,4693)
Cumulative Units %: This is a percentage of cumulative units in total. The formula is simply,
=[@[c Units]]/MAX([c Units])
[Related: using structural references in Excel – video]
Cumulative Cost & Cumulative Cost %:
These are similar calculations (instead of units, we calculate cost)
Explanation of these calculations:
See below animation to understand how the numbers are crunched.
3. Create Inventory Distribution Chart
Select cumulative units & cumulative cost % columns and create an XY chart. Make sure cumulative units is on horizontal (X) axis and cumulative cost % is on vertical (Y) axis.
Our curve should look something like this.
4. Set up ABC classification thresholds
Now we need to decide what is the threshold for classes A,B & C.
For most situations, Class A tends to be top 10% of the items.
Class B would be next 20%
Class C would be the last 70%.
But these numbers may change depending on your industry, manufacturing settings.
Lets say, some where in our spreadsheet, user has defined the thresholds for the classes in a range like this:
So $O$7:$O$9 contains the thresholds.
Next to this range, calculate additional numbers (for plotting A, B & C markers and boxes) like this:
Examine the download file for exact formulas.
5. Add the ABC items & % total cost columns to chart
Add the extra data to the chart (by right clicking on chart and going to select data box & clicking “Add” button).
Once the new series is added, make sure you format it as markers only so that we get something like this.
6. Add Error bars to the ABC markers to get boxes
This step involves adding error bars to ABC marker series and customizing them.
In Excel 2013: Add error bars by clicking on the + button next to chart
In earlier versions: Do this from layout ribbon
Once error bars are added, customize them (select and press CTRL+1). Set error amount to Custom and select the calculated error values as shown below.
Once added, format the error bars to show no cap and change line color to something pleasant.
Now we have boxes on the chart.
7. Clean up the chart, add labels & titles
This is where get creative. After some clean up, we can arrive at something like this.
Download ABC Inventory Analysis Template Workbook
Click here to download ABC Inventory Analysis workbook. It contains sample data & chart. Examine the formulas & chart settings to learn more. Or if you are in a hurry, replace the sample data with your inventory details and get instant results.
Do you use ABC analysis for inventory tracking & control?
I will be honest. I have never worked as inventory controller in a super-car manufacturing plant. That said, I run a business and we do have inventory. Not physical but digital inventory. So I often use analysis like ABC or pareto to quickly figure out where I should focus my efforts.
What about you? Do you use techniques like ABC analysis to narrow down to a few items that matter most? How do you do it in Excel? Please share your tips & experiences using comments.
Add few more techniques to your inventory
Feeling low on your Excel skills inventory? Stock up with below goodies.
- Pareto Analysis in Excel – How to & tutorial
- Analyzing competition using charts – case study
- Track employee vacations & productivity [dashboard & tutorial]
- Track annual goals & achievements
28 Responses to “FIFA Worldcup 2018 Excel Tracker – FREE Download”
Good work as always - I liked the way you did the "menu" on the left hand side (although the buttons aren't lined up between tabs if I'm being ultra picky)
Have you previously written about the method of extracting the Wikipedia page into Power Query? It's not something I recall seeing before.
ps other geeky observsations:
- the bracket columns are too narrow for the date & match number - and will need to be wider still when the team names get populated
- match 51 should be Moscow (Luzhniki) for consistency
- it's not possible to be 23 hours ahead of GMT - the International Dateline gets in the way! I think the maximum is 14. There are also a couple of countries who work to a quarter hour to make it really complicated!
- There's a typo in the how-to - "compated" instead of compared
Thanks for the lovely feedback. I have fixed almost all of them.
1) button alignment: this is tricky as row heights can change between sheets.
2) Column width is fixed now so bracket view looks better
3) Updated the stadium name
4) Did not bother with the 23 hours ahead thingie. This is more of a novelty feature 😛
5) Fixed the type
6) Fixed an issue with live score table. This should work as long as the points table is maintained in wikipedia page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_FIFA_World_Cup
7) I have not discussed the technique of reading all tables on webpage to one big table. Watch out for a blog post on this soon.
Button alignment is one for the ultra-OCD sufferers 😉 There are ways, but only for those with too much time on their hands.
Aah, Excel. The perfect tool for people like us. Everything (cells) is in same shape and size by default and aligned perfectly. 😀
Is there actually a way to copy row heights (in the same way you copy column widths?)
By the way Chandoo, great post. I'm forwarding to my department. I actually use another query from the same page to automatically fill in the team names for the knock-out stages (I made one for round of 16 which I then duplicated and edited for quarter-finals etc.) This is incredible, I was always wondering how to do these type of queries from the web, and now I know 🙂
Hello!
This is quite amazing and incredibly cool to use 🙂
Testing the constraints of this sheets a few errors popped I noticed:
- Vlookup Group E-H refers to column J instead of E (eg. Brazil gets the same points as Russia because the formula looks up Russia twice)
- Power query only has 29 lines, the overview of has 32 but the 3 countries from group A are lost as the overview is refreshed - causing N/A in the group stage colums
@Jake.. thank you. I am sorry for the errors. I could not test the live points table until the games began. I see my folly now. I have fixed both issues and uploaded a new file. As the points table relies on a wikipedia page, if someone decides to change the layout or rename a column it can seriously harm this template. I took some precautions in the Power Query layer to adjust column names dynamically etc, but it is not foolproof.
Try downloading the newer version and let me know if you see something funny.
No worries!
Was able to fix the vlookup myself but the power query had me bit stumped 🙂 And wanted to give you a heads-up to everyone can enjoy it!
Thanks for the awesome sheet!
Hi,
Thanks for sharing this world cup tracker. Certainly makes it more interesting when the data is current. As a newbie, it also helps to have a couple of mistakes to find whether unintentional or not.
Thanks again
Hi,
Your v-lookups in the "Group Stage" tab for groups E, F, G, and H (all the ones under column O) are pointing to the wrong country. They all point to column J, so whatever happens to the countries in column J will also be reflected for the countries in the groups in column O for that same row.
Just thought I'd call that out. Thanks for the great work on this!
@Christian... Thanks for trying this and letting me know about lookups. I have fixed the issue now. Please download latest version for that and few more fixes.
Refresh All did not work correctly. Team names vanished though points were updated.
@Sheeloo... Can you please try with latest version (download again using above links). I tested up to latest Iran's stunning win over Morocco and it works.
Dear Chandoo
Thanks a lot for this worksheet.
However, while refreshing the data, I am getting error message as "Initialisation of Data Source failed".
May I know what version of Excel you are using? Do you have internet connectivity? If you are familiar with Power Query, try tracing the steps in the query editor. And oh, first start with the latest version of file (link above).
@Etienne - yes. Copy row, paste formats will do it, although obviously that will bring the formats of every cell in the row as well as the height.
Latest version seems to be working well.
One request: the Groups & Points tables on the Group Stage sheet have the team names pre-entered. This means they don't get sorted according to the results.
On my copy, I've changed them to a lookup, so they appear in the same order as the points table. It would be good if you can do the same if/when you release a new update!
Here's what I did. It's not the most elegant, but it works, and I didn't have much time to spend on it!
Using helper values of 1,2,3,4 in columns I and N for each group, the formula for the first team name in group A (cell J4) is:
=INDEX(points[Team],MATCH(OFFSET(J4,-(I4),0),points[Group],0)+(I4-1))
This can be copied & pasted to the other team name cells.
Cheers!
Good suggestion. I have made changes to the points table to remove lookups and just show teams in the order they appear in the detailed table. This way, You will see top two teams on first two rows. We could highlight them as well (figured this would make it look like a bowl of M&Ms, so didn't bother) or highlight *YOUR* team.
I consider my Excel skills as above average but far from guru and I love how your little projects like this get me to look at data in a new way. I would like to expand on the data in the points table through the use of some calculations but I am a little challenged by the data coming across as text. The Pts column is easy to deal with, but I'm having problems with the GD. The negative goal differential looks like it may be noted with an en dash instead of a minus sign, but if I search for an en dash in the data Excel doesn't find any. I would like to include conversion to a minus sign in my little macro so I can get everything to numbers but so far I am not having any luck. Any thoughts? Thanks for your help.
Thanks for such kind words 🙂
I suggest adding an extra step in Power Query to convert points, GD & other columns to numbers. You can replace em dash in PQ. I did not do it as this will add another layer of dependency and should the wikipedia page change, one more reason for the query to fail.
As always, an awesome spreadsheet from Chandoo. I love the Power Query score update without macros. The country watch-out is a unique feature as well!
For those who like a predictor template with flag lookup and a ribbon UI, here is our spreadsheet:
https://www.spreadsheet1.com/fifa-world-cup-2018-russia-free-prediction-templates-for-excel.html
Here is our World Cup 2022 template with LAMBDA functions:
https://www.spreadsheet1.com/fifa-world-cup-2022-qatar-free-prediction-templates-for-excel.html
[…] Interesting World Cup Tracker here at chandoo.org : https://chandoo.org/wp/fifa-worldcup-2018-tracker/ […]
Great template!
I came across another one with image vlookups for country flags
https://eexcel.co.uk/downloads (World_Cup_2018_Sweepstake.xlsx)
This is a great Template.
I am running Excel 2010 with the PowerQuery add-in running.
The scores will not update, so I followed the error and the second operation (Fitlered rows) says that the table is empty.
After a few minutes on Wikipedia, I realise that my PowerQuery skills are not good enough to work out what the issue is.
Any suggestions?
I would like to fix it myself is possible.
Thanks,
Sean.
@Sean... Can you try the latest version mate? I think it should work.
Where can I see the results for a specific match?
Thanks!
@Juan... You can now. I have included a results tab that shows match scores. This too is a live table. Just refresh data to get new results. Please download latest version file from links above to use this feature.
PS: There is another version coming soon with all goals too. I just have to spend some more time polishing the Json to table Power Query thingie.