Production planning by spreadsheet for a start-up firm

Theories on the life cycle of firms combined with stage model theories of information technology adoption indicate that start-up firms may have different needs than mature firms. In particular, start-up firms' need for simplicity, development speed, adaptability, transparency and clarity often trump cost minimisation in the characteristics looked for in production planning tools.Here, a case study is presented of a start-up firm with geographically distant suppliers and geographically dispersed warehouses and customers. Production planning needed to move from Post-it notes to a formal system. A spreadsheet-based production planning system was custom built that allowed the firm to decide on purchases and have dynamically adjusted available-to-promise information to help the sales force.