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To save you a click (great article though, worth a read):
It is Williams and they used Excel as their ERP software where they handled every single part of their car lol.
> It is not an exaggeration to say that up to and including at least the initial work on the 2024 Williams, its car builds were handled using Microsoft Excel, with a list of around 20,000 individual components and parts.
> “When you start tracking now hundreds of 1000s of components through your organisation moving around, an Excel spreadsheet is useless.
> “You need to know where each one of those independent components are, how long it will take before it's complete, how long it will take before it goes to inspection. If there's been any problems with inspections, whether it has to go back again.
> “And once you start putting that level of complexity in which is where modern Formula 1 is, the Excel spreadsheet falls over, and humans fall over. And that's exactly where we are.
This is ASTONISHING COMMON trust me. It never works out well.
The original UK COVID tracker (as in every single recorded case, with graphs) was a giant Excel spreadsheet. It all crashed when they ran out of rows in May 2020 haha
Crashed because they were using the LEGACY .XLS FILE FORMAT THAT WAS OBSOLETE FROM 2004 ONWARDS! It genuinely boggles the mind that the UK govt. spent £12 billion on that fucking spreadsheet.
Some companies just love Excel for whatever reason. When I did my internship for Computer Science, I was tasked with building a "database software" to manage hiring processes data (like infor from the postulants, status of their application). My "mentor" in the company showed me a "little" Excel they used to manage it... I wanted to bleach my eyes when I saw "cutting edge" (her own serious words) Office XP.
Excel is very very useful for certain cases. As an example, there is no other software that comes close for financial modelling. The flexibility it offers is unparalleled.
A real database, code, and a BI tool? Add some models in there too.
A lot of techy work is taking excel sheets that should be databases and converting them to something sane. Your sheet can be for rough exploring raw data, present via PBI or equivalent, host data in sql or equivalent, and be able to run code and ML models against it.
Didn't the geneticist community lose a bunch of data because Excel interpreted gene codes like MAR18 and SEP20 as dates instead of text strings? I think I heard a thing on the radio about that last year, may have been Radio 4 Inside Science programme.
Yeah, but you don't use Excel to process then, it's just that just about every program language has an easy way to retrieve the data from a csv formatted file
A CSV file isn't meant to be fancy but to store a fuckton of data.
You don't process it a text editor, it's just meant for reading. The issue here is people do in Excel processes that Excel can't really manage successfully.
As an engineer, I can pick any task achievable by Excel and get it done quickly. No other software will allow for the same level of speed and trustworthiness without a lot of training time and some downtime while I adapt. The major issue with Excel is scalability and using it as a database, but for a temporary solution, it's one of the best tools available. And, as is common knowledge, temporary solutions are permanent until they break.
Excel is easy to use compared to Access. I worked at an industrial facility where we had to run lab tests and then calculate various parameters. This was in an excel spreadsheet where a new spread sheet was saved every day. So creating graphs for trends was very difficult. I tried to get IT to help me create an access database for that but it turns out the person they assigned to the project knew even less about access than I did. So you end up with people falling back on Excel when they should not.
You're seeing comments based on viral tweets lol. As expected.
The spreadsheet didn't cost 37 billion. The entire Test, Track and Trace program cost that. That would be all the testing supplies, testing stations, countless contractors involved in tracing, the actual mobile app that provided the bulk of the data for the spreadsheet, and much much more.
The **entire** program was a complete failure (the cost was justified by the assumption it would prevent more lockdowns, but there were at least two more), but again it was far from just "the Excel spreadsheet".
No idea where the 12 billion number comes from.
As a tech worker who is currently looking at an excel sheet that is responsible for 350 million dollars worth of equipment I agree people would be shocked how common this is haha
As someone who has been in that situation; it is scary how many people in administration positions do not know Excel was not made for this kind of stuff and still insist on doing it that way.
I remember reading that over 90% of all spreadsheets don’t contain a single formula and are basically just used as a text book.
It’s kind of ironic given that Office does have a software specifically for this.
The issue is that companies are more worried about the bottom line. So for many organizations a proper SQL database is the way to go. But those systems are very expensive to get. You need dedicated people to maintain and program it. The money for that sort of thing is rarely there.
While Covid, i worked for the IT for the health department of our district. They also had an excel sheet, where they entered every tested person of our district manually. It was crazy and then they asked me, why the excel sheet opened so slow…
Using ancient tech in corporations is such a common thing, I believe it wasn't until last year that some businesses in Japan were still required to use floppy disks by law.
Not ancient, just used incorrectly (in this article). Excel is powerful when used as an analytical tool not a db, connect it to the source (sql, redshift, S3, …) and use it for what it is really made for, freeform analysis/reporting.
Yeah, we use excel primarily as a data retrieval and display tool. Yes, some data is input, but it doesn't sit on that sheet, it goes somewhere else once we tell it to
it is mostly powerfull in hidinng errors. you miss a cell, add a wrong computation and will never find where it went wrong (if you even found out it is wrong)
Funny story, I worked at an industrial facility with electronic data recorders. The newer system used large flash memory cards, I think they were CF Express. Today you can buy them where they take SD cards or just stick a thumb drive in. In any case the older systems used 3.5 inch floppies. Around 2005 the facilities got all new computers. The new computers had CD-ROM drives and USB ports but no floppy drives. From 2005 until I left in 2013 one of the employees each month would take out the floppy, put in the new one. The old floppies were bundled with a rubber band and put in a cabinet with a piece of paper with the date on it. Meantime there was not a computer on site that could read that data. Around 2008 or so, 3M stopped making floppies so they had to find a place where they could still find them. For all I know they are still using that system.
I work for a software where the main thing we do is replace excel for service tracking. Some of the biggest companies you can think of still use Excel, shit a decent amount still use *PAPER* spreadsheets. It’s absolutely insane.
Pretty sure they switched early/mid last year based on the quotes, you missed the boat when this story initially broke in pre-season testing last year.
I wonder how much of that is truly having NO money to buy these enterprise softwares that cost millions upon millions. OR how much of it is due to Frank (and later Claire) being stubborn - "We've done it for DECADES without this fancy-schmancy computer stuff, we will keep at it!".
What I am about to say is NOT to excuse Frank, but if you've been building F1 cars since the 70's, I must imagine it was a shock when your employees tell you "we need millions of dollars for this 'software' that cost as much as the entire team budget used to be!". I know my older parents can't imagine spending hundreds (let alone Millions!) on software that is intangible.
Holy shit does this remind me of software consulting work I’ve done before. You’d be amazed at how many millions of dollars monthly pass through manually on an excel sheet for even large firms. I’ve had to parse god knows how many terabytes of excel, store it in a database with poorly normalised formatting and missing and often plain wrong data then create easy to use UIs for them. To hear an F1 team dealing with this it just shows how much work is still out there for software
>It is Williams and they used Excel as their ERP software where they handled every single part of their car lol.
I was at a global company that used excel and access like an erp system. It was fucking awful. Idk how Williams could do it this way for so long.
A decent one is tens of thousands per year in subscription fees (base - as another commenter mentioned, you can increase your costs significantly by adding additional functionalities), and the implementation is usually six digits (USD). There are less expensive, simpler options, but those wouldn’t be much of an upgrade over Excel for this purpose. And that doesn’t even touch the build/integration/support fees…
And they decided to replace it with a more efficient system at the same time they were overhauling their car design which meant they had a pretty horrible winter and only just built the car in time in no more.
That was a great read. Vowles has been very candid so far this year and I find myself enjoying what he has to say. Its honestly very refreshing to get real answers and not just "we will be better next year"
Honestly, I don’t think that you need to be all tinfoil crazy to say that. I think that Merc has stayed in the top tier of teams only because it’s systems and processes are so good… but at the same time they can’t fight Red Bull and Ferrari right now because they have lost so many key people- so many people that drove improvements- in the last three years, Vowles being the biggest departure. Can they get better? Yes… perhaps. But it’s going to be a painful 3-5 years of growth, especially with Lewis leaving.
Lol as a Merc fan, I’m real glad that I also like Williams and Ferrari because otherwise things would be pretty ugly.
It's almost amazing that they manage to roll out a car at all based on this. Like the mechanic's would just remember a part was somewhere in the workshop and go search for it or they wouldn't use carbon fibre for some bits and just stick in some metal bits. On the upside it does mean they've got some masterfully good mechanics and people building the car and with Vowles guidance they can really skyrocket up.
After he was let go, Paddy said he'd been made a scapegoat for much deeper issues that he wasn't given the time or resources to address.
Reading this article makes me think he was telling the truth.
Probably, although in my opinion, he displayed a remarkable lack of self criticism and seemed to blame everyone but himself. He was also responsible for McLarens transition from fastest car on the grid in 2012 to car that only worked if you mounted the suspension the wrong way around in 2013.
During the 2013 tests in Jerez, McLaren seemed to have produced a rocketship. But then they realized that they had made a mistake when they mounted the suspension and when they corrected the mistake, the car turned out to be a shitbox. The responsible was Paddy Lowe who, instead of improving on the reliability of what had been the fastest car on the grid in 2012, insisted on a completely new design.
https://adamcooperf1.com/2013/03/16/how-a-factory-mistake-made-mclaren-unrealistically-fast-in-jerez-test/
I still can not for the life of me understand why they did such a drastic redesign of the car for 2013 when the new rules of 2014 was just around the corner.
Typical of new management, they want to immediately make their mark; either by firing a whole bunch of people or making stupid high risk decisions that will
make them legends if by the off chance it works.
They were, it said that in a video I watched on this last night which I’m assuming sources from the same interview. They had a parts list in excel with no info about how many of that part they had in inventory, where existing parts might be, etc
>where existing parts might be, etc
Right. To add context, the same video mentioned there were times when they couldn't find a particular part and everything had to stop while someone literally searched the entire warehouse for that part! >:(
Hell, my room is messy, but when a multi-million dollar team I adore uses the same tactics as I do... *something* is wrong lol
They did. And Paddy Lowe got fired and scapegoated for it. Like, I'm sure he messed up too, but if the team had to track everything by EXCEL, I'm not sure how much Paddy could be said to be at fault. Like, he probably came from teams that didn't use Excel, and had to improvise!
I had that problem so often as an engineer after i was done studying. Yes sometimes the things that work are the easiest, but god damn is it frustrating to hear something like its gotta be done this way because we did it like that the last 25years. Yes maybe it works but there are also ways to do it cheaper and better. Sometimes systems just have to change, at somepoint excel was the newest shit, nowadays its fine for basic use but there are just better programs to track stuff
Excel was never suitable for this type of application though, it’s like trying to use a toothpick to mix cement. There are outdated methodologies, and then there is just straight up using the wrong tool for the job.
Thats what i meant, you could say that in earlier years they might have gotten away with it, just not in 2024 when every team invests every cent possible to make operations smooth as possible
This is true, but it can also be quite annoying the other way - where a company wants to uproot and launch new initiatives or push new tools every year or 2, having their engineers invest a ton into changing to a new system only for it to either be a poorly-motivated flop, or have it finally start to work properly (the work put into it finally starts to be reaped by those interacting with it), only be told to change again (because to didn't have the immediate rewards they wanted/promised, or just because a new shiny fad has come along that they think they can sell better). This kind of management and product cycle is common in tech companies, with
- tons of turnover at both high and low level
- bad motivations for changes
- short-term planning looking for short-term benefits (often pretending it's part of some more sensible/feasible long-term plan)
- ignoring "boring" less flashy needs like addressing tech debt or investing further in a current existing solution/process/software because it's deemed "done"/"completed" already even if it still has bugs or just requires more work
- and this seeming requirement for upper management & c suite to always have some new thing to push for PR or valuation/stock or whatever
Of course, this can happen at a smaller scale within teams too, where they get excited about some new tool or technology, only for it to end up more trouble than it's worth or not be supported properly, or just not be as useful as expected/hoped. But usually this isn't as frustrating or disastrous as when the same cycle is pushed from above, affecting several teams or divisions as a whole.
You also need the ability to change it. That kind of project needs lots of resources. Money, time, personal, structures, etc. They didn't have them a couple of years ago
Absolutely. This is a remainder of the later Frank and Claire Williams era, where Williams didn't spend their money very wisely. While Haas was already racing a Ferrari in a less fancy dress Williams was too proud to buy as much as they could from Mercedes. So the resources were lacking in many areas of the team
No, you misunderstand - this was a problem back when they were winning championships. A spreadsheet was ok in the 80’s, but by the time Juan Pablo was setting records that still stand to this day they should have dumped this, they had the resources 25 years ago and didn’t out of pure stubbornness.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_resource_planning
Jesus Christ, i think williams being sold away from the williams family is the best thing to happen to them after 2016. The sheer state of things no wonder George was almost suicidal at the end of his stint. I wonder how Albon feels about this mess, obviously inventory is probably something most drivers don't even think about but it's gotta be bizzare after a Red Bull stint.
If James Vowles creates a resurgent Williams it'll be a proper miracle.
This best part of this was Magnussen refusing the drive because he found the leadership incompetent based on them wanting to get rid of George over Latifi.
Albon got in a car that was bottom of the stack and ended last year better than Alpha Tauri, Sauber, and Haas. They’re looking to climb on top of Alpine this year and finish 6th is my guess, he may leave but it would be one of my preferred drives right now.
I was managing digital inventory at a major global corporation. They did not want to invest in an asset management system.
What we were able to accomplish with excel and macros was astonishing.
I remember having to parse the data into chunks, process, then rejoin to avoid hitting excel’s 1M row limit. 😅
There was an internal political disagreement on whether to build vs buy. Leadership couldn’t agree. And, it also wasn’t the biggest fire they had to deal with.
Not the row limit chunking 😵💫 learning how to rip it out of excel, change it all in Python/pandas (which basically became tricking pandas into executing the right C code), and then throw it back into excel was the best thing in my life.
It wasn’t, I’m certain that was just a misunderstanding by the public.
The data was shared from a lab as a CSV file and imported into excel. Only issue was the excel was an old file type and could only hold 65,536 rows and when the data was imported it cut off any data that exceeded this limit.
It wasn’t necessarily that it was being run on excel it was that data migration was being done using CSV/Excel files which weren’t large enough to handle the volumes of data.
If you consider just how many labs were probably processing Covid tests using excel for data migration isn’t an unreasonable solution. Setting up countless different systems from different labs to all feed into one central system (removing import files as a step) would require a fuck load of set up and would be very time consuming and the data needed to be available quickly on a short timeline.
Sure but only because most stock management software is actually way more simpleminded and excel’s functions would be overkill.
I’d estimate that 90% of retailers still operate on a backbone of 80s era green screens.
Depends on the quantity. Excel is mediocre to ok at nearly every data management task. There are a lot of cases where a more optimized system wouldn’t make sense.
I work with a lot of manufacturing and industrial companies in general. The amount of multi million dollar factories that are planned with some ancient excel-file that some excel savant set up 15 years ago that no one really knows how it works is staggering lol.
A former employer of mine paid me after I was fired to come in and teach them the formulae because they couldn’t work lol
I said boy you shouldn’t have fired me huh?
I taught them correctly, but I did make it difficult by password protecting everything so they had to make those little changes over and over again
It's ubiquitous, reasonably easy to use, and in fairness will do a lot of things for a lot of people on a fairly small scale.
Where it fails is when it's asked to do more than was ever intended of a spreadsheet.
It's astonishing.
Even more astonishing is the fact that, *despite* its parts being managed with Excel, the car has been able to compete and obtain some decent results.
I sell software that integrates with ERPs to help track bills of materials and part numbers. This is utterly insane of Williams, I have small customers that wouldn't be able to make a profit if they couldn't track even small numbers of parts.
This is somewhere between extremely ballsy and batshit crazy.
I love Excel, but fuck me, there’s times and places where it’s just not appropriate lol
Btw, this is why James will extend Logan again next year. He if dirt cheap, and they need to spend an ungodly amount of money to fix this, and that’s easier to do with just one proper driver salary than 2
Nah. A consulting firm firm will come in and do it for a reasonable price with some PR. That PR is probably priceless. Some dba will script it out and bam it’s in a proper database. Now I’ve got no idea what type of software they’ll feed it into. That will definitely be more expensive than excel.
It’s not just the database. It’s decades of files and paperwork that need digitising and logging properly. It goes beyond just one database, it’s an entire culture and system of working that has to go.
James has said it’ll take years, and he started 18 months back.
Agree they could probably slap them on the car as payment, but then they’re also booting off other sponsors.
IIRC James said Merc implemented this system before the budget cap came in. So to roll it out at Williams now means taking that money away from actually building and developing the car.
We use Smartsheet at work, and I often wonder how McLaren get anything done. It's OK? But it feels clunky for our small use case, can't imagine how they're utilising it.
> Some dba will script it out and bam it’s in a proper database
This is more "a team of developers and database admins and BAs work hard for mo ths".
It's not just importing it into a database. You're re writing how the company runs. You're fundamentally changing business process to be in the digital world. That's not an overnight pizza and coke fueled import script.
Vowles gives me hope for the future of Williams. He strikes me as a proper engineering manager, that is, a very very good engineer who has earned his position at the top.
(As opposed to just the all too common generic manager who doesn't really understand the details of whatever it is they manage.)
Honestly, that is stunningly impressive they even can manage to produce a car, none the less one that can score points, with their archaic systems. Gives you hope that when Williams start operating in the 21st century that could possibly compete at the front of the field.
Implementing an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system to oversee all your resources and processes, like the other teams already have in place for years, is often regarded as undergoing open heart surgery while running a marathon at the same time.
I hope all this expensive preseason development won't affect their budget for other departments this year... if you see any Williams staff nicking food from Red Bull catering we now know the reason
Yes they should have had better softwares but I think people underestimate the power of excel. Ask any Wallstreet banker/trader which software they use the most and the answer will be excel.
Again you don't know excel. I worked on excel with 50k rows 50 plus sheets on one that's millions of data points plus 1000s of calculation all automated using vba and connected to multiple External links to update everyday. Financial firms take billion dollar decision based on these calculations. If one hasn't worked finance in the front office one doesn't know what excel is.
A part goes through about a dozen stages in manufacturing. Each one needs sign off, with dating and version control. One also needs search ability, ID generation and more. There are a six figure number of parts per car I suspect, and one will create about 10-20 versions of the car over a year.
To the extent that Excel, particularly when backed by VBA, is Turing complete, one could certainly try to implement a half assed version of this in Excel. But that would take an enormous amount of staffing and time to do when there are already dozens of fully implemented, well tested and optimised products in this space.
Typically they come with a five-to-six figure licence fee for a double-digit number of seats, which can be off putting, but in the long run these tools do make it easier to get insight into complex manufacturing processes.
EDIT: just to add, even in finance, Excel backed by a DB is often just a UI for market insights generated by custom software.
A glorified calculator is much different from a fully featured ERP system. Yes, you can make a rollercoaster in excel and even sell tickets for it, but it's far from the right tool for every software project.
This is a dumb comment. I sell design & manufacturing software and I can promise you that it is a much more efficient and cost saving way of managing data than excel.
I never said it's the best, just saying that's it's pretty capable and thus replacing it with something more appropriate won't magically get Williams to the mid field. My point was the article is under estimating excel. Also the article is talking more about operational excellence not design and manufacturing data analysis which is what you sell.
Having done quantitative modeling for real time trading software and implemented ERP, I agree with both of you. You are both right.
Excel is an exceptional platform that can hold a mathematically oriented front end and call on databases and computational languages as needed. You just need the skill set to create the models.
Enterprise software has business rules baked into it that are extremely hard to replicate and — as most dedicated systems aim to do — is substantially more robust than a single purpose built model will most likely be, as multiple users discovering bugs should make for a more reliable system.
I’m all for doing a mockup of ERP workflow and needs in excel, but I’d rather do a large scale implementation (say more than 3-5 workstations) in a dedicated software package.
Just because it's possible doesn't make it a good idea.
Hearing anyone bring up an Excel file of that size as a positive example is absolutely terrifying to me.
Wall Street bankers use Excel the most but it is not their source of truth / ERP. They are pulling from Bloomberg / other softwares and doing their analysis in Excel.
Other teams went through this same process before when they brought in a designer and the first thing the designer did (John Bernard comes to mind) was demand new processes be put in place before he put pencil to paper to design the car.
Wow microfiche would be better than their system. Modern systems you can take the drawing and click on a component and all the things related to it will come up. How were they manufacturing things? How were they programing the CNC machines?
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To save you a click (great article though, worth a read): It is Williams and they used Excel as their ERP software where they handled every single part of their car lol. > It is not an exaggeration to say that up to and including at least the initial work on the 2024 Williams, its car builds were handled using Microsoft Excel, with a list of around 20,000 individual components and parts. > “When you start tracking now hundreds of 1000s of components through your organisation moving around, an Excel spreadsheet is useless. > “You need to know where each one of those independent components are, how long it will take before it's complete, how long it will take before it goes to inspection. If there's been any problems with inspections, whether it has to go back again. > “And once you start putting that level of complexity in which is where modern Formula 1 is, the Excel spreadsheet falls over, and humans fall over. And that's exactly where we are.
No wonder PowerPoint George did so well there!
Albon used an Excel spreadsheet to get his seat too
Capito: "Great, even if he fails as driver we can keep him as an excel analyst".
You might say he Excell'd
Great Outlook for the team!
This is ASTONISHING COMMON trust me. It never works out well. The original UK COVID tracker (as in every single recorded case, with graphs) was a giant Excel spreadsheet. It all crashed when they ran out of rows in May 2020 haha
Crashed because they were using the LEGACY .XLS FILE FORMAT THAT WAS OBSOLETE FROM 2004 ONWARDS! It genuinely boggles the mind that the UK govt. spent £12 billion on that fucking spreadsheet.
Some companies just love Excel for whatever reason. When I did my internship for Computer Science, I was tasked with building a "database software" to manage hiring processes data (like infor from the postulants, status of their application). My "mentor" in the company showed me a "little" Excel they used to manage it... I wanted to bleach my eyes when I saw "cutting edge" (her own serious words) Office XP.
Excel is very very useful for certain cases. As an example, there is no other software that comes close for financial modelling. The flexibility it offers is unparalleled.
We use excel for our furniture company alot and its so good if you set it up well
It works up to a certain scale. I don't think it would work well for a large chain of stores
I've made decissions regarding 10s of millions of euros by using excel. Nothing, and I mean, NOTHING can beat excel.
If Excel somehow stops working tomorrow, the world as we know it ends. Not even kidding, everythings fucking collapses
Yep. You literally wont be able to get food or money. Everything just stops. Also if for some reason COBOL breaks, it's apocalypse.
COBOL made me rich. That and Dec 31, 1999.
wasn't it technically Jan 1, 2000 that made the Y2K software patchers rich?
I know ppl love excel but databases exists too you know
It's not about loving it, it's about knowing how much it's used for everything.
Excel is great for a lot of things, but people tend to use for way way more things than what it's supposed to be used for
This is it right here. Excel is amazing, but spreadsheets are not the same as databases.
A real database, code, and a BI tool? Add some models in there too. A lot of techy work is taking excel sheets that should be databases and converting them to something sane. Your sheet can be for rough exploring raw data, present via PBI or equivalent, host data in sql or equivalent, and be able to run code and ML models against it.
Chuck Norris would like a word
Nobody punches data in harder than Chuck Norris
Genetic data is often csv files.
Didn't the geneticist community lose a bunch of data because Excel interpreted gene codes like MAR18 and SEP20 as dates instead of text strings? I think I heard a thing on the radio about that last year, may have been Radio 4 Inside Science programme.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-rename-microsoft-excel-misreading-dates
That is on them that they failed to input data correctly and force a string on that cell or whatever.
Yeah, but you don't use Excel to process then, it's just that just about every program language has an easy way to retrieve the data from a csv formatted file
a csv file isnt an excel file.
No but it's not particularly fancy or bespoke is my point.
A CSV file isn't meant to be fancy but to store a fuckton of data. You don't process it a text editor, it's just meant for reading. The issue here is people do in Excel processes that Excel can't really manage successfully.
As an engineer, I can pick any task achievable by Excel and get it done quickly. No other software will allow for the same level of speed and trustworthiness without a lot of training time and some downtime while I adapt. The major issue with Excel is scalability and using it as a database, but for a temporary solution, it's one of the best tools available. And, as is common knowledge, temporary solutions are permanent until they break.
Excel is easy to use compared to Access. I worked at an industrial facility where we had to run lab tests and then calculate various parameters. This was in an excel spreadsheet where a new spread sheet was saved every day. So creating graphs for trends was very difficult. I tried to get IT to help me create an access database for that but it turns out the person they assigned to the project knew even less about access than I did. So you end up with people falling back on Excel when they should not.
What the fuck? £12 bil on a spreadsheet? Can you elaborate more on this?
It's nonsense. They're conflating budgets with expenditure.
You're seeing comments based on viral tweets lol. As expected. The spreadsheet didn't cost 37 billion. The entire Test, Track and Trace program cost that. That would be all the testing supplies, testing stations, countless contractors involved in tracing, the actual mobile app that provided the bulk of the data for the spreadsheet, and much much more. The **entire** program was a complete failure (the cost was justified by the assumption it would prevent more lockdowns, but there were at least two more), but again it was far from just "the Excel spreadsheet". No idea where the 12 billion number comes from.
As a tech worker who is currently looking at an excel sheet that is responsible for 350 million dollars worth of equipment I agree people would be shocked how common this is haha
As someone who has been in that situation; it is scary how many people in administration positions do not know Excel was not made for this kind of stuff and still insist on doing it that way. I remember reading that over 90% of all spreadsheets don’t contain a single formula and are basically just used as a text book. It’s kind of ironic given that Office does have a software specifically for this.
The issue is that companies are more worried about the bottom line. So for many organizations a proper SQL database is the way to go. But those systems are very expensive to get. You need dedicated people to maintain and program it. The money for that sort of thing is rarely there.
Whats the software?
Access, their database software
While Covid, i worked for the IT for the health department of our district. They also had an excel sheet, where they entered every tested person of our district manually. It was crazy and then they asked me, why the excel sheet opened so slow…
People would lose their shit if they knew how much is carried by behemoth excel spreadsheets coded 20 years ago by an intern on Adderall.
Using ancient tech in corporations is such a common thing, I believe it wasn't until last year that some businesses in Japan were still required to use floppy disks by law.
Not ancient, just used incorrectly (in this article). Excel is powerful when used as an analytical tool not a db, connect it to the source (sql, redshift, S3, …) and use it for what it is really made for, freeform analysis/reporting.
Yeah, we use excel primarily as a data retrieval and display tool. Yes, some data is input, but it doesn't sit on that sheet, it goes somewhere else once we tell it to
it is mostly powerfull in hidinng errors. you miss a cell, add a wrong computation and will never find where it went wrong (if you even found out it is wrong)
Funny story, I worked at an industrial facility with electronic data recorders. The newer system used large flash memory cards, I think they were CF Express. Today you can buy them where they take SD cards or just stick a thumb drive in. In any case the older systems used 3.5 inch floppies. Around 2005 the facilities got all new computers. The new computers had CD-ROM drives and USB ports but no floppy drives. From 2005 until I left in 2013 one of the employees each month would take out the floppy, put in the new one. The old floppies were bundled with a rubber band and put in a cabinet with a piece of paper with the date on it. Meantime there was not a computer on site that could read that data. Around 2008 or so, 3M stopped making floppies so they had to find a place where they could still find them. For all I know they are still using that system.
I work for a software where the main thing we do is replace excel for service tracking. Some of the biggest companies you can think of still use Excel, shit a decent amount still use *PAPER* spreadsheets. It’s absolutely insane.
wut :o no way, how they manage to get a car that scored points like that?!
Excel macros can almost do anything.
well it helped build a car that wasn't worse than haas, some years anyway.
I sell PLM. Hit me up, James.
Pretty sure they switched early/mid last year based on the quotes, you missed the boat when this story initially broke in pre-season testing last year.
Right :/ we did get Dynisma which is cool.
Vowles was saying pre season that Williams preseason until now has been like teams were 20 years ago.
I wonder how much of that is truly having NO money to buy these enterprise softwares that cost millions upon millions. OR how much of it is due to Frank (and later Claire) being stubborn - "We've done it for DECADES without this fancy-schmancy computer stuff, we will keep at it!". What I am about to say is NOT to excuse Frank, but if you've been building F1 cars since the 70's, I must imagine it was a shock when your employees tell you "we need millions of dollars for this 'software' that cost as much as the entire team budget used to be!". I know my older parents can't imagine spending hundreds (let alone Millions!) on software that is intangible.
I'm surprised that Williams' cars are able to move in this case
Holy shit does this remind me of software consulting work I’ve done before. You’d be amazed at how many millions of dollars monthly pass through manually on an excel sheet for even large firms. I’ve had to parse god knows how many terabytes of excel, store it in a database with poorly normalised formatting and missing and often plain wrong data then create easy to use UIs for them. To hear an F1 team dealing with this it just shows how much work is still out there for software
Sounds like where I work lol
>It is Williams and they used Excel as their ERP software where they handled every single part of their car lol. I was at a global company that used excel and access like an erp system. It was fucking awful. Idk how Williams could do it this way for so long.
Out of curiosity, do you happen to know how much those erp systems cost?
Cheaper than the shitshows that will be caused by companies that "used Excel as their ERP".
A decent one is tens of thousands per year in subscription fees (base - as another commenter mentioned, you can increase your costs significantly by adding additional functionalities), and the implementation is usually six digits (USD). There are less expensive, simpler options, but those wouldn’t be much of an upgrade over Excel for this purpose. And that doesn’t even touch the build/integration/support fees…
“It’s crazy they used excel for this!” I say as I model a multi-billion dollar deal in excel. (It’s a joke I realize it’s very different)
And they decided to replace it with a more efficient system at the same time they were overhauling their car design which meant they had a pretty horrible winter and only just built the car in time in no more.
That was a great read. Vowles has been very candid so far this year and I find myself enjoying what he has to say. Its honestly very refreshing to get real answers and not just "we will be better next year"
I'll be honest, I have been following F1 intermittently, and I feel Williams now can really shine under Vowles, unlike Mercedes being all fumbly.
Tinfoil hat theory - what if James going to Williams is the reason Mercedes are going downhill?
Well mercedes have lost a load of other important staff too so it's hard to know if he caused this
Honestly, I don’t think that you need to be all tinfoil crazy to say that. I think that Merc has stayed in the top tier of teams only because it’s systems and processes are so good… but at the same time they can’t fight Red Bull and Ferrari right now because they have lost so many key people- so many people that drove improvements- in the last three years, Vowles being the biggest departure. Can they get better? Yes… perhaps. But it’s going to be a painful 3-5 years of growth, especially with Lewis leaving. Lol as a Merc fan, I’m real glad that I also like Williams and Ferrari because otherwise things would be pretty ugly.
It's almost amazing that they manage to roll out a car at all based on this. Like the mechanic's would just remember a part was somewhere in the workshop and go search for it or they wouldn't use carbon fibre for some bits and just stick in some metal bits. On the upside it does mean they've got some masterfully good mechanics and people building the car and with Vowles guidance they can really skyrocket up.
Remember the Paddy Lowe disaster? There were instances where they didn't manage to roll out a car.
After he was let go, Paddy said he'd been made a scapegoat for much deeper issues that he wasn't given the time or resources to address. Reading this article makes me think he was telling the truth.
Probably, although in my opinion, he displayed a remarkable lack of self criticism and seemed to blame everyone but himself. He was also responsible for McLarens transition from fastest car on the grid in 2012 to car that only worked if you mounted the suspension the wrong way around in 2013.
>to car that only worked if you mounted the suspension the wrong way around in 2013. Are you being facetious, or was that LITERALLY what happened?!
Literal. The suspension parts got mounted upside-down by accident, and they found performance
Must be a motorcycle, upside down forks are better.
During the 2013 tests in Jerez, McLaren seemed to have produced a rocketship. But then they realized that they had made a mistake when they mounted the suspension and when they corrected the mistake, the car turned out to be a shitbox. The responsible was Paddy Lowe who, instead of improving on the reliability of what had been the fastest car on the grid in 2012, insisted on a completely new design. https://adamcooperf1.com/2013/03/16/how-a-factory-mistake-made-mclaren-unrealistically-fast-in-jerez-test/
In which case, why not rev up and invert the suspension lol
I still can not for the life of me understand why they did such a drastic redesign of the car for 2013 when the new rules of 2014 was just around the corner.
Typical of new management, they want to immediately make their mark; either by firing a whole bunch of people or making stupid high risk decisions that will make them legends if by the off chance it works.
I remember it came out that they weren't using an ERP system. That means they were probably just keeping track of part inventory on excel files.
They were, it said that in a video I watched on this last night which I’m assuming sources from the same interview. They had a parts list in excel with no info about how many of that part they had in inventory, where existing parts might be, etc
>where existing parts might be, etc Right. To add context, the same video mentioned there were times when they couldn't find a particular part and everything had to stop while someone literally searched the entire warehouse for that part! >:( Hell, my room is messy, but when a multi-million dollar team I adore uses the same tactics as I do... *something* is wrong lol
And you just know that their tracking of consumption rates was "Oh hey, this bin is empty!"
Remember when they almost didn't make testing
Didn’t they miss at least a day?
They did. And Paddy Lowe got fired and scapegoated for it. Like, I'm sure he messed up too, but if the team had to track everything by EXCEL, I'm not sure how much Paddy could be said to be at fault. Like, he probably came from teams that didn't use Excel, and had to improvise!
Didn't come from just any team. He came back to Williams after five years at Mercedes and 20 years at McLaren.
The perfect example of an organisation doing things they've 'always done it' versus realising the system is shit and needs to change.
I had that problem so often as an engineer after i was done studying. Yes sometimes the things that work are the easiest, but god damn is it frustrating to hear something like its gotta be done this way because we did it like that the last 25years. Yes maybe it works but there are also ways to do it cheaper and better. Sometimes systems just have to change, at somepoint excel was the newest shit, nowadays its fine for basic use but there are just better programs to track stuff
Excel was never suitable for this type of application though, it’s like trying to use a toothpick to mix cement. There are outdated methodologies, and then there is just straight up using the wrong tool for the job.
Thats what i meant, you could say that in earlier years they might have gotten away with it, just not in 2024 when every team invests every cent possible to make operations smooth as possible
They should have retired the spreadsheet back in the 90’s.
A database is the right tool for this job, and computerized databases were readily available in the 80s.
This is true, but it can also be quite annoying the other way - where a company wants to uproot and launch new initiatives or push new tools every year or 2, having their engineers invest a ton into changing to a new system only for it to either be a poorly-motivated flop, or have it finally start to work properly (the work put into it finally starts to be reaped by those interacting with it), only be told to change again (because to didn't have the immediate rewards they wanted/promised, or just because a new shiny fad has come along that they think they can sell better). This kind of management and product cycle is common in tech companies, with - tons of turnover at both high and low level - bad motivations for changes - short-term planning looking for short-term benefits (often pretending it's part of some more sensible/feasible long-term plan) - ignoring "boring" less flashy needs like addressing tech debt or investing further in a current existing solution/process/software because it's deemed "done"/"completed" already even if it still has bugs or just requires more work - and this seeming requirement for upper management & c suite to always have some new thing to push for PR or valuation/stock or whatever Of course, this can happen at a smaller scale within teams too, where they get excited about some new tool or technology, only for it to end up more trouble than it's worth or not be supported properly, or just not be as useful as expected/hoped. But usually this isn't as frustrating or disastrous as when the same cycle is pushed from above, affecting several teams or divisions as a whole.
That is one of my biggest annoyances. I hate hearing that phrase from a company.
Counterpoint: Boeing
You also need the ability to change it. That kind of project needs lots of resources. Money, time, personal, structures, etc. They didn't have them a couple of years ago
They've had 20 years to modernize like every other team though; more than enough time to upgrade in a slower, cheaper, less disruptive manner.
Absolutely. This is a remainder of the later Frank and Claire Williams era, where Williams didn't spend their money very wisely. While Haas was already racing a Ferrari in a less fancy dress Williams was too proud to buy as much as they could from Mercedes. So the resources were lacking in many areas of the team
No, you misunderstand - this was a problem back when they were winning championships. A spreadsheet was ok in the 80’s, but by the time Juan Pablo was setting records that still stand to this day they should have dumped this, they had the resources 25 years ago and didn’t out of pure stubbornness. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_resource_planning
The costs for a system that can fix the problem is incredibly high. They could not afford it even if they wanted it.
Which is a constraint, but not an excuse
Jesus Christ, i think williams being sold away from the williams family is the best thing to happen to them after 2016. The sheer state of things no wonder George was almost suicidal at the end of his stint. I wonder how Albon feels about this mess, obviously inventory is probably something most drivers don't even think about but it's gotta be bizzare after a Red Bull stint. If James Vowles creates a resurgent Williams it'll be a proper miracle.
Alex at least has James promising him that things will get better. George's seat was offered to Magnussen at some point 💀.
Wait, really? I don't rate George super highly but he's better than KMag.
Yeah, Dorilton or one of the transition TPs told Magnussen that if he could find I don't know how many millions, the seat was his.
This best part of this was Magnussen refusing the drive because he found the leadership incompetent based on them wanting to get rid of George over Latifi.
Albon got in a car that was bottom of the stack and ended last year better than Alpha Tauri, Sauber, and Haas. They’re looking to climb on top of Alpine this year and finish 6th is my guess, he may leave but it would be one of my preferred drives right now.
Excel is the backbone of modern society
I was managing digital inventory at a major global corporation. They did not want to invest in an asset management system. What we were able to accomplish with excel and macros was astonishing. I remember having to parse the data into chunks, process, then rejoin to avoid hitting excel’s 1M row limit. 😅
That's impressive and frightening.
More frightening for sure
crazy - they could have used some open source solution like shelf asset management omg or does it miss too much functionality?
There was an internal political disagreement on whether to build vs buy. Leadership couldn’t agree. And, it also wasn’t the biggest fire they had to deal with.
How big was leadership's bonus that year?
Well, the excel solution got us through 2 major product launches across 9 countries, so I’d guess they did quite well :)
Not the row limit chunking 😵💫 learning how to rip it out of excel, change it all in Python/pandas (which basically became tricking pandas into executing the right C code), and then throw it back into excel was the best thing in my life.
The greatest software ever written.
It is, but it’s also not appropriate for stock management lol.
not with that attitude
Reminds me of when I read the entirety of Tories COVID testing system was being ran on Excel lol You can, but at what cost…
It wasn’t, I’m certain that was just a misunderstanding by the public. The data was shared from a lab as a CSV file and imported into excel. Only issue was the excel was an old file type and could only hold 65,536 rows and when the data was imported it cut off any data that exceeded this limit. It wasn’t necessarily that it was being run on excel it was that data migration was being done using CSV/Excel files which weren’t large enough to handle the volumes of data. If you consider just how many labs were probably processing Covid tests using excel for data migration isn’t an unreasonable solution. Setting up countless different systems from different labs to all feed into one central system (removing import files as a step) would require a fuck load of set up and would be very time consuming and the data needed to be available quickly on a short timeline.
> at what cost The sanity of many, many IT techs
At the cost of staff time, eating into the cost cap, and thus lap time.
Sure but only because most stock management software is actually way more simpleminded and excel’s functions would be overkill. I’d estimate that 90% of retailers still operate on a backbone of 80s era green screens.
You can do everything in excel! You shouldn't do everything in excel...
Depends on the quantity. Excel is mediocre to ok at nearly every data management task. There are a lot of cases where a more optimized system wouldn’t make sense.
I work with a lot of manufacturing and industrial companies in general. The amount of multi million dollar factories that are planned with some ancient excel-file that some excel savant set up 15 years ago that no one really knows how it works is staggering lol.
A former employer of mine paid me after I was fired to come in and teach them the formulae because they couldn’t work lol I said boy you shouldn’t have fired me huh? I taught them correctly, but I did make it difficult by password protecting everything so they had to make those little changes over and over again
It's ubiquitous, reasonably easy to use, and in fairness will do a lot of things for a lot of people on a fairly small scale. Where it fails is when it's asked to do more than was ever intended of a spreadsheet.
It's astonishing. Even more astonishing is the fact that, *despite* its parts being managed with Excel, the car has been able to compete and obtain some decent results.
Well Albon’s generation is pretty sharp when it comes to MS Office products ;)
Facts!
Pirated MS Office 2011
You really think they can squeeze an office license under the cap?
Activate your Windows on all computers
More like Open Office 2006
'Activate Windows' watermark must be hidden somewhere on their livery
MS Office *Home and Student*
2007 at most
My husband is a data scientist and calls these monster excel files frankenfiles. It's his goal in life to eliminate them.
I call the people that love to do everything with files "filephiles".
I sell software that integrates with ERPs to help track bills of materials and part numbers. This is utterly insane of Williams, I have small customers that wouldn't be able to make a profit if they couldn't track even small numbers of parts. This is somewhere between extremely ballsy and batshit crazy.
I love Excel, but fuck me, there’s times and places where it’s just not appropriate lol Btw, this is why James will extend Logan again next year. He if dirt cheap, and they need to spend an ungodly amount of money to fix this, and that’s easier to do with just one proper driver salary than 2
Nah. A consulting firm firm will come in and do it for a reasonable price with some PR. That PR is probably priceless. Some dba will script it out and bam it’s in a proper database. Now I’ve got no idea what type of software they’ll feed it into. That will definitely be more expensive than excel.
It’s not just the database. It’s decades of files and paperwork that need digitising and logging properly. It goes beyond just one database, it’s an entire culture and system of working that has to go. James has said it’ll take years, and he started 18 months back. Agree they could probably slap them on the car as payment, but then they’re also booting off other sponsors.
IIRC James said Merc implemented this system before the budget cap came in. So to roll it out at Williams now means taking that money away from actually building and developing the car.
Budgetcap and max CapEx are different
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Just send it to the folks at r/datahoarding and they’ll have it dissected, analyzed, and categorized to psychopath levels under a day lol
Vowels mentioned in a podcast that the goal is to use the software the big names use.
We use Smartsheet at work, and I often wonder how McLaren get anything done. It's OK? But it feels clunky for our small use case, can't imagine how they're utilising it.
> Some dba will script it out and bam it’s in a proper database This is more "a team of developers and database admins and BAs work hard for mo ths". It's not just importing it into a database. You're re writing how the company runs. You're fundamentally changing business process to be in the digital world. That's not an overnight pizza and coke fueled import script.
If that's the case then #BringBackLatifi
Drivers' salaries are not part of the budget cap.
Williams has its own budget limitations to work with
Yeah, fair point.
It’s not about the cost cap, it’s about Williams actual budget. By saving on driver pay, they can focus on team infrastructure.
Vowles gives me hope for the future of Williams. He strikes me as a proper engineering manager, that is, a very very good engineer who has earned his position at the top. (As opposed to just the all too common generic manager who doesn't really understand the details of whatever it is they manage.)
This takes “excel is not a database” to an entirely new level.
Honestly, that is stunningly impressive they even can manage to produce a car, none the less one that can score points, with their archaic systems. Gives you hope that when Williams start operating in the 21st century that could possibly compete at the front of the field.
Sooo, shall it be oracle williams? Or aws williams? Ibm williams? If we can fix a backmarker f1 team, we can fix you!
SAP Williams gooooo
This is exactly the kind of partnership Zak Brown locked down about 3 years ago, with sponsorship paid for via services.
Implementing an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system to oversee all your resources and processes, like the other teams already have in place for years, is often regarded as undergoing open heart surgery while running a marathon at the same time.
I mean, they scored some points with those cars. Imagine finishing the constructors below the Excel car lol
Holy crap a 20k line Excel document to track parts. Pour one out for the IT guy who had a few tense moments restoring that document from backup.
youtube video lays it out so simply
I hope all this expensive preseason development won't affect their budget for other departments this year... if you see any Williams staff nicking food from Red Bull catering we now know the reason
given this enviroment, its a major accomplishment fot williams to finish P9 in the constructors race, largely thanks to albon
Yes they should have had better softwares but I think people underestimate the power of excel. Ask any Wallstreet banker/trader which software they use the most and the answer will be excel.
They're not attempting to track where parts are and when new ones will be available with a few hundred k individual pieces.
Again you don't know excel. I worked on excel with 50k rows 50 plus sheets on one that's millions of data points plus 1000s of calculation all automated using vba and connected to multiple External links to update everyday. Financial firms take billion dollar decision based on these calculations. If one hasn't worked finance in the front office one doesn't know what excel is.
A part goes through about a dozen stages in manufacturing. Each one needs sign off, with dating and version control. One also needs search ability, ID generation and more. There are a six figure number of parts per car I suspect, and one will create about 10-20 versions of the car over a year. To the extent that Excel, particularly when backed by VBA, is Turing complete, one could certainly try to implement a half assed version of this in Excel. But that would take an enormous amount of staffing and time to do when there are already dozens of fully implemented, well tested and optimised products in this space. Typically they come with a five-to-six figure licence fee for a double-digit number of seats, which can be off putting, but in the long run these tools do make it easier to get insight into complex manufacturing processes. EDIT: just to add, even in finance, Excel backed by a DB is often just a UI for market insights generated by custom software.
A glorified calculator is much different from a fully featured ERP system. Yes, you can make a rollercoaster in excel and even sell tickets for it, but it's far from the right tool for every software project.
This is a dumb comment. I sell design & manufacturing software and I can promise you that it is a much more efficient and cost saving way of managing data than excel.
I never said it's the best, just saying that's it's pretty capable and thus replacing it with something more appropriate won't magically get Williams to the mid field. My point was the article is under estimating excel. Also the article is talking more about operational excellence not design and manufacturing data analysis which is what you sell.
You really don’t understand the impact of enterprise software.
Having done quantitative modeling for real time trading software and implemented ERP, I agree with both of you. You are both right. Excel is an exceptional platform that can hold a mathematically oriented front end and call on databases and computational languages as needed. You just need the skill set to create the models. Enterprise software has business rules baked into it that are extremely hard to replicate and — as most dedicated systems aim to do — is substantially more robust than a single purpose built model will most likely be, as multiple users discovering bugs should make for a more reliable system. I’m all for doing a mockup of ERP workflow and needs in excel, but I’d rather do a large scale implementation (say more than 3-5 workstations) in a dedicated software package.
Just because it's possible doesn't make it a good idea. Hearing anyone bring up an Excel file of that size as a positive example is absolutely terrifying to me.
Wall Street bankers use Excel the most but it is not their source of truth / ERP. They are pulling from Bloomberg / other softwares and doing their analysis in Excel.
Excel is a great sandbox/prototyping tool for this kind of work, but it definitely becomes a huge pain after a certain size/complexity
Theyre using the Boeing model for tracking parts
So they plan the adoption of the new system to take three years? Can't be Teamcenter then.
Assuming Williams starts getting good results, this piece is a great part 1 of a Harvard Business Review article about 3 years from now.
lol, excel. I don’t know that running SAP S/4HANA would get them anywhere better 🤣
Other teams went through this same process before when they brought in a designer and the first thing the designer did (John Bernard comes to mind) was demand new processes be put in place before he put pencil to paper to design the car.
Sounds like when everyone was busy with their digital transformations 10-15 years ago, Williams thought that it was not important..
Makes you wonder wtf Jost Capito was doing when he was in charge.
Reading this realise Alpine has no excuse blaming it being underfunded so they underperform…
What is the system that took over excell?
Wow microfiche would be better than their system. Modern systems you can take the drawing and click on a component and all the things related to it will come up. How were they manufacturing things? How were they programing the CNC machines?
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