#ivy putting his 1.5 years of engineering experience to use

[squashonesquashtwosquashthree]

ok so i just read the article about how williams racing is going through systems/productions improvements but i wanna focus on the excel list bit cause that bit is so relatable in a silly goofy way.

i’m working as a mechanical engineer and this is my first job out of college so im Assuming that by “excel lists” james means bill of materials which is So Fun And Relatable cause MY company is Also switching to an ERP system FROM EXEL BOMs‼️‼️‼️ like. i’m literally working on an excel BOM Right Now. and there’s a couple things about an f1 team using excel BOMs (and the switch to ERP) that are like. Oh Williams. Oh Man.

so first of all i’m working w BOMs with a couple hundred purchased + manufactured parts. and it’s Already a nightmare to work with so i can Not imagine working with several thousand. we also tend to have a lot of standard parts so there isn’t much revision necessary. but in f1 there’s Constant testing and design upgrades so parts are Constantly being revised. if you revise any part you gotta revise the BOM While Keeping record of the previous iteration(s) of the parts ordered, so if a parts getting fiddled with Multiple times, that entire BOM is getting revised. Multiple times. in the case i’m familiar with this means striking out a line item and sticking the revised version in a new line underneath. this Already sucks if it’s <10 items being revised once or twice, it’s definitely a nightmare if it’s hundreds of parts getting revised dozens of times. i’m straight up having a Moment imagining what these BOMs must look like and having to hunt for the correct part revisions

it’s also more of a nightmare if Multiple people are working on a project and have to revise the same BOM at the same time,,, like it’s a headache if One other person is fuckin w the excel BOM i’m currently working on and i gotta figure out wtf got changed,,,,,, imagine a whole team,,,,,

second of all. again this is my first job out of college so i have no frame of reference but my other coworkers that Have worked for multiple (and larger) companies are all like,,,,,,, No One Else In The Industry Used Excel BOMs What The Fuck. if my smedium company in fuck ass nowhere in the US is in the dark ages for using excel BOMs, then williams racing,,,, at the pinnacle of motorsport or whatever,,,,,,, is practically neolithic.

it also takes a Lot of work and manpower to switch to an ERP system, like i’m not really involved w it at my company but i know that there’s a lot of effort being put into fixing parts that were modeled poorly and fixing naming conventions for parts And that we were supposed to switch to ERP almost like,,,, a full year ago but it hasn’t happened yet cause it’s more work + more complicated than expected

tl;dr williams racing u are everything to me but this is Not the way i wanted u to be relatable, u are so sexy pls get ur ERP system working