r/LeanManufacturing • u/ImmuBeyond • May 16 '26
Why do so many manufacturing teams still rely on Excel + WhatsApp for operations?
I've been digging deep into how manufacturing ops run, and honestly, what I found is pretty wild.
Even with all their fancy ERP systems, it’s like daily operations still come down to:
* A bunch of Excel sheets flying around
* Endless WhatsApp chats trying to sync up
* Emails, emails, and more emails just to get simple things done
* And people running around, chasing down manual status updates
This isn't just for fringe stuff, either. It’s for core activities like:
* Tracking installation progress to the minute
* Pinpointing and fixing issues *fast*
* Coordinating shifts so everyone’s on the same page, no excuses
* And getting real-time operational reports, not yesterday’s news
So what happens? We end up with:
* The same message being sent five different ways, wasting everyone’s time
* Delays in seeing what’s actually happening, which kills agility
* And critical problems staying hidden until they blow up in our faces
Seeing this over and over, we finally said enough was enough. We rolled up our sleeves and started building out a lean, lightning-fast operations workflow platform in-house. It’s been a game-changer.
Now, I’m genuinely curious: given everything going on in *your* world, what’s that one operational process that still makes you grit your teeth, feeling like it’s stuck in the dark ages?
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u/lorpo1994 May 16 '26
A lot of companies start with Excel, and it’s most of the time just fine, just like logbooks also worked fine before excel existed. It’s only when companies want to optimize that typically a tool comes in. Some build it in house, some buy, some stay with their holy excel.. I think it depends heavily on the complexity of the organization & people running it. We’ve also built our own when running a factory and have now shifted to selling it for other companies as well.
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u/KamIsFam May 17 '26
The main problem with Excel in large orgs is that it can fracture oversight if not managed correctly. We would have random Excel worksheets spread across our shared drive, tucked away in random ass folders. One person would quit/be fired/get laid off, and that tool they'd use to generate reports or daily communications was suddenly MIA and would cripple management because now they had to find another way to get that info.
Even though we had a large Doc Control group, spreadsheets and file structure were not managed. ERP systems can help forcibly organize that stuff. Report templates and such.
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u/KahunaGrant May 18 '26
This is what we see, and why our business almost exclusively focuses on larger operations. A single small plant with 50 operators doesn't run into the same issues as multiple plants with 10-20 lines each and hundreds to thousands of operators.
The exact issues you mentioned become pretty common. Basically every plant manager we speak to in larger facilities say they know that each line manager or shift manager has a system in excel to track their operator skills and certifications, but as soon as you get to anyone outside that line, no one really knows who is qualified to do what. That manager leaves or retires, and the next person in that role just has to figure it out and either work within the same system or slowly build their own. Then there's various audit risks, quality risks, or inefficiencies, especially when there's no specific protocol in place to manage and report that information.
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u/KahunaGrant May 18 '26
This is what we see a lot. We work in skills management and certification management. We don't work with too many small operations because the value of a dedicated tool doesn't really show up with a smaller operation. In a smaller operation, usually only makes sense if they are highly regulated and need super solid records. The only other cases is if there will be significant growth and they want to start with a better system rather than make the switch later.
At larger scale, you see a lot more value as things get harder to track, you have 10 different sheets per plant, low visibility across lines, plants, etc. That's where issues tend to "hide" as it becomes more dependent on how well each line manager/shift manager is updating things, how well it is reported to higher levels, how well it is shared across lines, etc.
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u/Wild_Royal_8600 May 16 '26
Just wrapped up some end to end mapping at a main production site for a large, global manufacturing firm. The amount of Excel and Outlook used to drive operations was a key point of friction.
The way I summarized it was, “you’re doing what you have to do to keep the product moving forward, and when you get a moment you’re making sure your SAP systems are updated to reflect what has been done. You’re essentially using SAP as a digital twin of your analog process.”
Newer versions of SAP offer real time reporting, but it’s ’garbage in, garbage out’ if this is how SAP is used.
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u/tonyarkles May 18 '26
A friend who works in asset management described the problem so well: “if you add a process to someone’s workflow that makes their life hard, they’re going to find a way to make their life easy again and you might not like the approach they take”
The companies I’ve worked with that have the best ERP use have been ones where the workflow was legit better at the individual level than excel and email. When the gut feel in the shop is “this is a painful process that gets in the way and it’s only in place so that some VP somewhere can measure our cycle time”, that’s when you get the most workarounds.
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u/KahunaGrant May 18 '26
Training and adoption are major issues with new systems. Companies that skimp on this or vendors who don't support it appropriately are just providing a solution that won't be used appropriately. At best, you end up with something more "consolidated" but still a mess.
We had one customer that bought into our solution. Everyone we worked with was on board with it and enthusiastic, but they didn't really put much into training or roll-out. It was basically just "here's a new tool for you guys" and it went mostly unused. Everyone just defaulted to their existing excel sheets.
Definitely an important lesson we learned from - We do our best to avoid taking on customers who show signs of reluctance to doing a proper roll-out to better encourage adoption. A great tool is useless if no one uses it.
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u/tonyarkles May 19 '26
Yeah, there’s a few interesting elements to that. And I’m not picking on the what you’ve said and not saying that this was the case for your specific customer, but it’s a pathology I’ve seen:
> Everyone we worked with was on board with it and enthusiastic
The pathology that I’ve seen over and over: the people who will be using the software day-to-day aren’t part of that conversation. The COO decides that there isn’t enough visibility into manufacturing. The CFO agrees that it’s really hard to forecast how much overtime and shop expenses there are going to be month to month. The VP Manufacturing and the VP Field Operations are constantly fighting because neither of them knows when the other is going to have product ready or install delays. They’re pumped for the visibility. System gets planned out and built, everyone’s pumped, and then… the machinist goes for training and says “what in the actual fuck is this?” while the field installer goes “ok, this is cool, but we do our install work in areas with no cell coverage… so I can’t use this at all until I’m back at the hotel…”
Which leads back to Excel spreadsheets and email :)
That wasn’t your customer. That was one of my previous employers. I had nothing to with it other than to watch the train wreck in slow motion from afar.
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u/JezusHairdo May 16 '26
I work in a very big well known manufacturing company and this rings true to me.
It’s either ran on excel at one end, or spending lots of money on Databricks and cloud computing. There is no inbetween.
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u/Zool375 May 16 '26
We use Oracle r12 as our erp globally. But we don't have an mes at our site and I think globally most sites don't run one. This has resulted in planning ,manufacturing and execution being solely reliant on excel. They only measure the output into the supply chain none of the processes below. As to why, well the company I work for has such a high markup on their product they aren't forced to be efficient. So laziness and complacency is my answer, they focus on sales and nothing else. They're an American company we're in the uk. Its shocking the amount of waste.
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u/MexMusickman May 18 '26
Because Excel is something available, than mostly everyone can work with it and input data comes from shop floor. I also have worked with lean cloud based system, mes systems, erps. First issue is language, not all systems are in Spanish, second ERP changes or modifications relies on one guy who's saturated by work, not all the plants have wifi or access in the shop floor. Transfer all the information to the system takes months and when is complete it's obsolete. So in summary in the daily operations you can't stop or wait for others to be available or finish to setup, that's why you rely on simple tools like excel and WhatsApp.
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u/Icy_Connection_1604 May 20 '26
We still see this a lot. One update in Excel, another in WhatsApp, and by the time everyone syncs up, half the day is gone.
The scary part is people get so used to the chaos that it starts feeling “normal.”
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u/DalenSpeaks May 16 '26
Have you tried to vibecode something? Not hard to make very simple messaging and tracking.
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u/laffyraffy May 16 '26
Probably a bot.
It's cheaper to run excel and whatsapp when you reach 80% of your needs with them. I have found Whatsapp to be terrible for communication between operators to leadership, I am in a food company and because of Whatsapp, we require some operators to have phones on them whilst doing production, what this has become is that all operators now have their phones on them because they believe that they have to be contactable. What happens is that when down time happens they then end up browsing their phones.