Basically this alone may have significantly change the course of several European nations for the next decade because of policy made on the that paper. NPR's P

Basically this alone may have significantly change the course of several European nations for the next decade because of policy made on the that paper. NPR's Planet Money team just released a podcast [1] that goes into the basics of that. Last year my company was having supply chain issues. We have complicated 3 tier supply chain for a critical component with odd shipping restrictions and mix of batch and continuous process and other items. We don't control the the vendors but pay on yield and know what material enters and leaves each supplier. We desperately needed insight into why we had delivery issues as the suppliers were not very forth coming understandably. I was tasked with writing an app that let analysts run dozens of scenarios and give allow them to tweak all aspects of our models to gain insight into yield and schedule. I could have written a python script or Java or C# app (since I dont have SCM or MES software) or I could write an Excel spreadsheet. In 2 weeks, I wrote a spreadsheet that modeled the basics including complicated recycling and exposed everything to analysts. We debottlenecked several logistics issues with that and kept the business running and that spreadsheet still is updated daily. I can guarantee writing an engine+ui+reports in any language and allow the level of flexibility Excel provides would have taken me 6 months or more. The SCM or MES software would ultimately serve all of companies better but who has $200K-$1M+ to spend on these things for every issue when $200 + 2 weeks can get you 80% of the way. [1] http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/04/19/177999020/episode-357-how-much-should-we-trust-economics http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/04/19/177999020/episode-...