You want to know, at any moment, where each production order stands: which stage its pieces are in, how many are left, and whether the delivery date is safe. In many factories that answer lives in a supervisor's notebook or a WhatsApp group, and it takes a phone call to get it. For the wider picture of why this happens, see factory production tracking problems and paper, WhatsApp and old Windows programs.
This free Excel sheet is a simple starting point: one register where each day's output per stage is written, and a dashboard that turns it into a status per order. The sheet and its page are in Arabic: production tracking sheet. All free sheets are listed at /templates (in Arabic).
What is inside the sheet
- Start here: how to use it and the colour key.
- Stages: your factory's stages in order, up to 12. The last one written is treated as the final stage.
- Production orders: order number, model, customer, quantity and delivery date.
- Stage log: each day, the quantity that left a stage for an order. You pick the order and the stage from two lists.
- Dashboard: for each order, the quantity out of every stage, the quantity out of the last stage, completion %, what remains, days to delivery and a status.
- Why still on Excel?: when a sheet is no longer enough.
A worked example (sample data)
These are the sample numbers in the sheet, not a real factory. The stages are cutting, printing, sewing, finishing, ironing and packing, and there are four orders.
- PO-101, men's shirt, 500 pieces. All 500 were cut and printed. Sewing logged 420 + 60 = 480, finishing 450, ironing 300 and packing 200. Completion is 200 of 500, which is 40%, with 300 remaining.
- PO-102, jeans, 300 pieces. Every stage shows 300, so completion is 100%, nothing remains and the status is done.
- PO-103, children's T-shirt, 800 pieces. Cut and printed 800, sewn 600, finished 400, but nothing has left packing. Completion is 0% and 800 remain by the dashboard's definition. The stage columns show you that 600 pieces are actually well advanced.
- PO-104, winter pyjamas, 400 pieces. Nothing logged yet, so 400 remain.
Look at PO-103. The stage columns are what tell you the order is not stuck; the completion figure alone would be misleading. That is why the dashboard shows both.
Why these features matter
- One register, written once. You do not rewrite totals per order. The dashboard adds up the log by order and stage.
- Status from the calendar. An order is "late" if its delivery date has passed, "near" with three days or fewer, otherwise "in progress", and "done" once the full quantity has left the last stage. Days remaining are measured from today, so the picture changes daily.
- Typing errors are flagged. If a stage shows more than the one before it, the cell turns red, since a stage cannot normally release more than it received.
- Lists instead of free typing. Choosing the order and stage from a list avoids a spelling difference that would split one order in two.
- Free, no sign-up, and compatible with Excel 2016 and later, Google Sheets and LibreOffice.
Using the online version
The template page opens directly on the worked example above. You edit the white (input) cells right in the page, and the grey calculated cells update immediately. You can import your own .xlsx file made from this template, export your work to .xlsx, or download the original Excel file. Your data stays in your browser and is not sent to the server.
Start by replacing the six sample stages with yours, then add your real orders, then log what left each stage today.
Common mistakes
- Leaving an empty cell between two stages. The sheet reads them in order and the final stage would be wrong.
- Logging the quantity that entered a stage instead of the quantity that left it.
- Never entering a day's output, so the dashboard looks calm while the order is late.
The honest limit: this sheet depends on someone collecting the numbers from the stages and typing them in, so you learn about a delay when someone updates it. If you want each worker to confirm receiving and handing over with one tap, so numbers appear when they happen, that is what Softwiro's production management system does: it records an entry and exit time for every piece in every stage and shows which stage takes how many days. Where the slowest stage is, see finding the bottleneck on a sewing line.
Next step
Take your three oldest open orders, enter their quantities and delivery dates, and log what has left each stage so far. The dashboard will tell you in a minute which one needs a phone call today.