New Manufacturing Database

[vodka3000]

Hello all

I would like your honest opinion, working for a manufacturing company of many different products I am looking to create a database which enables me to save all the relevant data from product name, manufacturing time, historical data such as prior year demand and much more.

from here I want to create future forecast for expected demand for each product so I can allocate production/manufacturing time, is this something I can achieve in access? have have a centra location.

at the moment I use excel to do all my forecasting.

[Stewart Ross]

All of what you mention can be achieved using a relational database system, but it is easy to underestimate the scale of the project. I would advise that such a project is likely to take the work of an experienced developer anything from 3-6 months up to complete, depending on what you agree the specification should be.

Excel is a great tool for financial planning and analysis, but as it is not a relational database you would not find your experience on Excel helps you with Access. In many ways it can be a hindrance, because the free-form nature of Excel conflicts with the precisely-specified nature of the relational model, where multi-table analysis and design is essential if you are to model the complex relationships involved in manufacture forecasting.

As developing any real-world application is a specialist task that always takes longer than expected I strongly suggest you hire a developer to do the work for you.

As a flavour of the tasks involved have a look at our esteemed expert msquared's HowTo article on Database normalisation and table structures.

-Stewart

[missinglinq]

I agree with everything Stewart has said! This and other Access forums are fueled primarily by questions from people who believed Microsoft's official line that "with Access, anyone can develop databases!" Anything but the very simplest databases require a great deal of time and experience, and your project, as you've outlined it here, is anything but simple!

Excel was designed with such things as financial forecasting in mind, while Access was not. Excel VBA is not Access VBA. Most of the functions you're probably accustomed to using in Excel aren't available thru Access VBA, and some that are available don't work in the same manner in Access as they do in Excel.

Hiring a consultant is really the only way to go for a project of this magnitude! A database of this complexity is very apt to take over your! The 3-6 months estimate Stewart mentioned for an experienced developer is likely to double for a newbie!

Good luck and welcome to Bytes!

Linq ;0)>