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
25 Responses to “Shift Calendar Template – FREE Download”
Hi Chandoo,
your recent postings include only Excel 2007 templates. Unfortunately the company I work at still runs Excel 2003. Is it possible to get your awesome files in other excel version as well?
Thanks so much for your great excel stuff!
Is it possible to do this for shifts with hours instead of days? To organise a three shift day?
Thanks in advance,
Stelios
In my organization there are 45 employees i need split then into three shifts ex:A shift:14,B shift:14,C shift:14 and week off:3 kindly help me on this.
@Masthan
You need to understand what rules your company has for the various shifts / roster combinations
Chandoo, I once did a shift control spreadsheet for my team. I put one person in each line, the columns were the days. I put a shift code in each cell indicating in which shift that person should work, or if the person were out that day. I have two codes for being out. One is for vacations and one is to compensate days worked in weekends. This way I was able to count how many persons I have in each shift, how many were on vacations and how many were out compensating (that's the term we use here) weekend worked hours.
Later I included the possibility of a person be in two lines one for normal hours other for overtime. This is mainly used for planning purposes. If you would like I can send you an example. The only problem of this spreadsheet is that we don't have a person view, only this consolidated view.
Hi George, I would like to have a copy of your spreadsheet if you can share it.
Thanks in advance, Chuck
Hi Chandoo,
Where is the code located ? is it VBA ? If so , how do you hide it ? Or it is .NET ?
Thx
@Idan
.
No VBA or code, it is all done with Mirrors.
Only Joking,
.
But there is no VBA or code,
It is all done with Named Formulas and Lookups.
Have alook at the cells in the calander area and Named Formulas in the Formulas, Name Manager Tab.
How can i calculate between two or more different workbooks? Please, reply me as early as possible.
@Anand
Open the workbooks you want to link to
Start a formula = and click and change between workbooks as required.
You can use the View, Switch window menu to change workbooks mid formula
The format for using workbooks is
=[Workbook.xlsm]Sheet1!$A$1
or
=SUM('[Book2.xls]Sheet1'!$A$1:$D$10)
etc
Hi Chandoo,
I am working with a call centre wherein i ned to update at the month end 20 to 30 employees login hours which are defict to track it at the month end is very difficult is there any template which can be made to track that why on a particular day a guy who needs to be on calls was why not on calls.
Thank you so much Chandoo. This is really helping me. As usual, you rock.
What's FortyTwoDays and Calendar in Name manager?
Both are unused and FortyTwoDays doesn't make any sense.
I have a SQL db that contains records of events scheduled/completed on a particular date. Can this method ous building a calendar be used to display those events on the respective day?
Positively awesome!
I'm attempting to help a friend create a schedule for adult classes - and of course its not"paid help". Here is the scenario:
20 classes, instructor, room#, student class size, start date, number of class days (need to subtract weekends)
class
instructor
room
students
start
#days
PATH
karen
201
21
01/01/13
11
BILLING
jane
401
15
01/12/13
13
MEDISOFT
mike
301
11
01/25/13
9
he'd like to see these classes show up in different colors within the same month's calendar chart. He can draw it, but I'd like to see it done automatically through data, and I just can't visualize it, but I KNOW this will work - can you help?
Jan 🙂
Dear chandoo,
Try many way to download still can't access. Any way we want to try out 3 shifts with 3 guys in a group .eg Group A Morn, Group B Night and Group C Rest. And every each group must work on sunday to take turns. In fact we are security teams so that's why sunday is required to work. Pls guide and show how to put in the working calendar. Thank you in advance.
I've been trying to copy and/or recreate this to use in a workbook I'm doing for the transportation department I'm working for. I need to have the calendar on the first sheet in my document (it has graph's from data on another sheet). I'm trying to use it to track (with the conditional formatting) accidents and injuries. I've redone the conditional formatting to do 4 different accident types (no injury, near miss, OSHA recordable injury and work loss injury), but when I enter the formula's you have in the calendar portion where it says "DateOfFirst-FirstWeekDay" I can't figure out how you did that. Are you able to help?
I would like to use Excel to solve the following problem for a community work. I want to create a Driver schedule for a given month from a pool of volunteers for a community service. Each of these volunteers can drive only on specific days in a week. I would like to populate the driving schedule for each weekday with primary, secondary and tertiary drivers in a random fashion so that I do not overburden one person. I would greatly any help you can provide.
Hi chandoo,
Thanks for your valuable effort for create this template and let me know how to add multiple employees in the the Roaster.
Hi Chandoo,
This article on shift roaster is very helpful. Could you please let me know how i can use the same for n number of resources who work 24/7, considering their leaves and holidays?
Thanks,
Savitha
Hi Chandoo,
This article on shift roaster is very helpful to all. Could you please let me know how i can use the same if I want to add for some more shifts, since the color is not getting change if I add more shifts like 4,5 etc.,
Thanks,
Murali
nice post
How can I change the date to 2017 under Shift Data worksheet.
solution 1:
mydata=B2:C16
stoplist=E2:E8
=LET(RNG,A2:A16,SMR,C2:C16, F,(RNG=E2)+(RNG=E3)+(RNG=E4)+(RNG=E5)+(RNG=E6)+(RNG=E7)+(RNG=E8),SUM(SMR)-SUM(SMR*F))
=LET(RNG,A2:A16,SMR,C2:C16,RH,N(B2:B16=B2), F,(RNG=E2)+(RNG=E3)+(RNG=E4)+(RNG=E5)+(RNG=E6)+(RNG=E7)+(RNG=E8),TOT,SUM(SMR)-SUM(SMR*RH*F),SUM(SMR*RH)-SUM(SMR* RH*F))
ALTERNATE SOLUTION
=SUM(C2:C16)-SUM(FILTER(C2:C16,ISNUMBER(BYROW(A2:A16,LAMBDA(a,TOROW(SEARCH(a,E2:E8),2))))))
=SUM((B2:B16=B2)*(C2:C16))-SUM((ISNUMBER(BYROW(A2:A16,LAMBDA(a,TOROW(SEARCH(a,E2:E8),2))))*(B2:B16=B2)*(C2:C16)))
let
Source = Excel.CurrentWorkbook(){[Name="Table1"]}[Content],
#"Replaced Value" = Table.ReplaceValue(Source,null,";",Replacer.ReplaceValue,{"Column1"}),
#"Transposed Table" = Table.Transpose(#"Replaced Value"),
#"Removed Other Columns" = Table.SelectColumns(#"Transposed Table",{"Column1", "Column2", "Column3", "Column4", "Column5", "Column6", "Column7", "Column8", "Column9", "Column10", "Column11", "Column12", "Column13", "Column14", "Column15", "Column16", "Column17", "Column18", "Column19", "Column20", "Column21", "Column22", "Column23", "Column24", "Column25", "Column26", "Column27", "Column28", "Column29", "Column30", "Column31", "Column32", "Column33", "Column34", "Column35", "Column36", "Column37", "Column38", "Column39", "Column40", "Column41", "Column42", "Column43", "Column44", "Column45", "Column46", "Column47", "Column48", "Column49", "Column50", "Column51", "Column52", "Column53", "Column54", "Column55", "Column56", "Column57", "Column58", "Column59", "Column60", "Column61", "Column62", "Column63", "Column64", "Column65", "Column66", "Column67", "Column68", "Column69", "Column70", "Column71", "Column72", "Column73", "Column74", "Column75", "Column76", "Column77", "Column78", "Column79", "Column80", "Column81", "Column82", "Column83", "Column84", "Column85", "Column86", "Column87"}),
#"Merged Columns" = Table.CombineColumns(#"Removed Other Columns",{"Column1", "Column2", "Column3", "Column4", "Column5", "Column6", "Column7", "Column8", "Column9", "Column10", "Column11", "Column12", "Column13", "Column14", "Column15", "Column16", "Column17", "Column18", "Column19", "Column20", "Column21", "Column22", "Column23", "Column24", "Column25", "Column26", "Column27", "Column28", "Column29", "Column30", "Column31", "Column32", "Column33", "Column34", "Column35", "Column36", "Column37", "Column38", "Column39", "Column40", "Column41", "Column42", "Column43", "Column44", "Column45", "Column46", "Column47", "Column48", "Column49", "Column50", "Column51", "Column52", "Column53", "Column54", "Column55", "Column56", "Column57", "Column58", "Column59", "Column60", "Column61", "Column62", "Column63", "Column64", "Column65", "Column66", "Column67", "Column68", "Column69", "Column70", "Column71", "Column72", "Column73", "Column74", "Column75", "Column76", "Column77", "Column78", "Column79", "Column80", "Column81", "Column82", "Column83", "Column84", "Column85", "Column86", "Column87"},Combiner.CombineTextByDelimiter("|", QuoteStyle.None),"Merged"),
#"Split Column by Delimiter" = Table.ExpandListColumn(Table.TransformColumns(#"Merged Columns", {{"Merged", Splitter.SplitTextByDelimiter(";", QuoteStyle.Csv), let itemType = (type nullable text) meta [Serialized.Text = true] in type {itemType}}}), "Merged"),
#"Added Prefix" = Table.TransformColumns(#"Split Column by Delimiter", {{"Merged", each "|" & _, type text}}),
#"Replaced Value1" = Table.ReplaceValue(#"Added Prefix","||","|",Replacer.ReplaceText,{"Merged"}),
#"Split Column by Delimiter1" = Table.SplitColumn(#"Replaced Value1", "Merged", Splitter.SplitTextByDelimiter("|", QuoteStyle.Csv), {"Merged.1", "Merged.2", "Merged.3", "Merged.4", "Merged.5", "Merged.6", "Merged.7", "Merged.8"}),
#"Removed Columns" = Table.RemoveColumns(#"Split Column by Delimiter1",{"Merged.1"}),
#"Removed Duplicates" = Table.Distinct(#"Removed Columns")
in
#"Removed Duplicates"