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423

Good god. Can you imagine how long it takes just to load that damn spreadsheet? Just another example of technology being used in places it should not be. Its not even an access database (eww) just excel.

Archive: https://archive.today/nyU86

From the post: "There's a new boss at a storied 47-year-old Formula 1 team, and he's eager to shake things up. He's been saying that the team is far behind its competition in technology and coordination. And Excel is a big part of it.

Starting in early 2023, Williams team principal James Vowles and chief technical officer Pat Fry started reworking the F1 team's systems for designing and building its car. It would be painful, but the pain would keep the team from falling even further behind. As they started figuring out new processes and systems, they encountered what they considered a core issue: Microsoft Excel.

The Williams car build workbook, with roughly 20,000 individual parts, was "a joke," Vowles recently told The Race. "Impossible to navigate and impossible to update." This colossal Excel file lacked information on how much each of those parts cost and the time it took to produce them, along with whether the parts were already on order. Prioritizing one car section over another, from manufacture through inspection, was impossible, Vowles suggested."

Good god. Can you imagine how long it takes just to load that damn spreadsheet? Just another example of technology being used in places it should not be. Its not even an access database (eww) just excel. Archive: https://archive.today/nyU86 From the post: "There's a new boss at a storied 47-year-old Formula 1 team, and he's eager to shake things up. He's been saying that the team is far behind its competition in technology and coordination. And Excel is a big part of it. Starting in early 2023, Williams team principal James Vowles and chief technical officer Pat Fry started reworking the F1 team's systems for designing and building its car. It would be painful, but the pain would keep the team from falling even further behind. As they started figuring out new processes and systems, they encountered what they considered a core issue: Microsoft Excel. The Williams car build workbook, with roughly 20,000 individual parts, was "a joke," Vowles recently told The Race. "Impossible to navigate and impossible to update." This colossal Excel file lacked information on how much each of those parts cost and the time it took to produce them, along with whether the parts were already on order. Prioritizing one car section over another, from manufacture through inspection, was impossible, Vowles suggested."

(post is archived)

[–] 2 pts

How much you want to bet that spreadsheet is decades old.

[–] 3 pts

It probably started out as a project by some "new guy" or "intern" and they really loved it.. When it was tracking about 200 parts.

Well... It did not age well and no one wanted to spend the effort to properly input them into any number of free OSS tools that are DB backed and 100x easier to use. So.. It became the monster that it is today.

[–] 7 pts

There is no longer lasting solution than a temporary fix.

[–] 5 pts

Hah. That reminds me of something. "There is nothing more permanent than a temporary government program".