Microsoft Excel has a variety of features for creating and charts and graphs using stored data. Although a cost-effective solution for small SPC projects, Excel is not designed for a plant-wide or corporate-wide SPC implementation. Quality professionals who are using Excel for their Statistical Process Control solution should consider the following differences between Excel and an application that was specifically developed to conduct SPC (such as ProFicient).
- Like Microsoft Word, Excel is intended for a single desktop for personal use.
- Excel was not designed to be used as a Wide Area Network application—that is the job of other Microsoft database products like SQL Server.
- Excel is not intended for use with electronic gages. Operators must "type in" data, which is prone to error. Furthermore, the editing of entered data is difficult to control and unauthorized deletions could occur
- When an alarm occurs, Excel is not equipped to automatically send out emails, log event information and create Pareto charts of events or alarms.
- When a user types data into an Excel spreadsheet, everything is saved to a single file. When someone else wants to view that data, he/she must find the worksheet and open it. If two different people open the worksheet and enter data at the same time, data could be confused and/or corrupted.
- Typically, a deployment with hundreds of part numbers results hundreds of Excel files. Organizing this type of deployment is extremely complex to manage.
- Comparing part data that resides in one worksheet vs. another is extraordinarily challenging to manage in Excel. This is particularly true if the specifications are different.
- Comparing data in different Excel files requires copying and pasting existing data into additional Excel files, further complicating large SPC deployments.
- Data Comparison between Files: Even if data can be successfully copied from multiple Excel files into one file, comparisons are very difficult if specification limits differ from one Excel file to the next.
- Normalizing data from different Excel files and across different data sets is very difficult, and even if possible, one must be very careful with how control limits and other statistics are calculated.
- Comparing several different parts/machines or features on the same box and whisker chart is very difficult to do in Excel.
- In Excel, there are few provisions to prevent users/operators from clicking on menu items that they should not be accessing.
- Generally speaking, Excel does not have embedded security features and privileges to prevent unwanted editing, data manipulation, or deletion.
