PRACTICAL EXCEL WORKFLOW

How to update an Excel production schedule from an ERP export

A deterministic daily method for refreshing ERP-owned fields while preserving scheduler-owned notes, priority and status.

An ERP open-jobs export and a working production schedule have different owners. The export has current quantities and dates; the board contains today’s human decisions. Treating either file as a complete replacement loses useful information.

Safe method

Copy yesterday’s board before any refresh.
Choose a stable job key; use Job Number + Operation when Job Number repeats.
Mark quantity, due date and workcenter as ERP-owned. Mark notes, priority and manual dates as scheduler-owned.
Reject blank or duplicate keys instead of choosing a row.
Separate new, closed and matched jobs, then review field-level OLD → NEW values.

Worked example

Job 1042 / OP20 keeps the note ‘fixture waiting’ and priority 2. Its ERP quantity changes 80 → 64 and due date moves to 2026-08-14. Only the two ERP-owned cells change.

Checks that prevent plausible-looking mistakes

Do not join on yesterday’s row number.
Do not let a blank ERP value erase a scheduler field.
Stop and review when a required export column is renamed or removed.

The objective is not to maximize automatic matches. It is to make every accepted match deterministic and route uncertainty to a short manual review.

What the review should show

Exact key and ERP versus user column ownership mapping — Declare the match key and which source owns every column.

Production board refresh change report and exception counts — Review changes and exceptions before exporting the updated workbook.

Free alternatives

Power Query can implement this method with exact joins and anti-joins. It is the best free option when someone in the shop can build and maintain the query. The local beta packages the same safety decisions into one narrow workflow; it does not claim to support every ERP or custom workbook.

Further reading: source 1 · source 2

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