Took me 5 years to figure out I was over-engineering our inventory spreadsheets for no reason

I work at a small manufacturing shop in Cleveland. About 3 months ago our warehouse guy retired, old Bob. I had this whole complex system with color coded conditional formatting, vlookups, macros, the works. Bob never used any of it. He just had a yellow legal pad and a pencil. When he left I had to train his replacement and she asked me "why do you track supplier lead times down to the decimal? we just need to know if the part is here or not." That hit me hard. I realized I spent hundreds of hours making something that looked impressive but didnt actually help anyone do their job faster. Now Im stripping it down to the basics. Anyone else realize they were making things too complicated just to look smart?

2 comments

2 Comments

grant7281mo ago

Saw this article about how most people waste like 40% of their time at work on stuff that doesn't matter. Your story proves that right. Bob knew what was up with that legal pad. Its funny how we think adding all these bells and whistles makes us look competent but really it just slows everything down. My buddy Joel runs a HVAC company and he said the same thing happened to him with his scheduling software. Simple always wins in the end.

taylor3051mo ago

@grant728 easy there, it's just a legal pad, not the secret to life.