How to Build an Andon Board in Excel (and When You'll Outgrow It)

A lot of plants start their Andon board in Excel, and that's not a bad place to start. Everyone already has it, it costs nothing extra, and a spreadsheet on a TV makes problems visible, which is the whole point of Andon.

Here's how to build a simple one in about 15 minutes, and how to tell when you've outgrown it.

If you'd rather not build it, a ready-made version is free at andontool.com/andon-board-template.

What the board needs to show

Keep it to one row per station or line, with six columns.

Station: the line, cell, or machine.

Status: Running, Help needed, or Down.

Type of help: Material, Maintenance, Quality, Supervisor, or whatever your plant calls for.

Called at: the time the call came in.

Taken by: the name of the person responding.

Minutes waiting: how long the call has been open.

If someone can glance at the TV and answer "who needs what, and who's on it," the board is doing its job.

Build it step by step

Drop-down lists. Select the Status column, go to Data, then Data Validation, choose List, and type Running,Help needed,Down as the source. Do the same for Type of help with your own request types. Drop-downs keep everyone using the same words, and the color rules depend on that.

Color rules. Select the Status column, go to Home, then Conditional Formatting, then Highlight Cells Rules, then Equal To. Type Down and pick a red fill. Add a second rule for Help needed in yellow, and a third for Running in green.

The time of the call. Click the cell under Called at and press Ctrl+Shift+; (semicolon), or Cmd+; on a Mac, to stamp the current time.

Minutes waiting. With Called at in column D, enter =IF(D2="","",ROUND(MOD(NOW()-D2,1)*1440,0)) in the first row and copy it down. It handles calls that cross midnight. If it shows a time instead of a number, set the column's format to Number. Then add one more color rule to that column: Greater Than 10, in red, so a call that has waited too long stands out.

Make it readable from across the floor. Use a large font, freeze the top row, and collapse the ribbon so the TV shows only the board.

Some plants use "Andon board" to mean an hour-by-hour production board instead. The same tricks work there: columns for Hour, Target, and Actual, a Difference column that subtracts Target from Actual, and a red rule when the difference drops below zero.

When Excel is enough

A spreadsheet board works well when one area has a handful of stations and the person who updates it sits next to the computer. It's also a good way to prove the need before you spend money. Run it for two weeks and see what the calls tell you.

Signs you've outgrown it

Somebody has to type every call. The operator who needs help usually isn't at the computer, so they radio or walk over to someone who is. That brings back the problem Andon was meant to fix: a call that goes to everyone and belongs to no one.

A yellow cell doesn't tell anyone. The board only helps if someone is looking at it when it changes.

The minutes don't move on their own. NOW() updates only when the sheet recalculates, after an edit or when someone presses F9, so a quiet sheet on a TV can show an old number.

Two people can't always edit at once. If the file sits on a shared drive, the second person who opens it usually gets a read-only copy. Cloud co-authoring avoids that, but then every device on the floor needs to be signed in.

The history disappears. When a call is cleared, the row is overwritten, and so is the only record of how long that call took. Unless someone copies rows to a log, there's nothing to bring to next week's improvement meeting.

If two or three of these sound familiar, the spreadsheet has done its job: it proved your plant needs a board. Now the board needs to run itself.

What comes after the spreadsheet

That's the gap I built Andon Tool to fill. The operator taps the kind of help they need on a phone or tablet at the station, and the call shows on every board within seconds. A responder claims it by name, so everyone can see it's taken. Response and completion times are recorded automatically, counting only working time, not breaks. A call nobody answers in time turns red on every board and counts as Overdue in reports, so nothing waits quietly in a yellow cell.

There's a short intro video at andontool.com/demo, and the free downtime cost calculator at andontool.com/downtime-cost-calculator shows what waiting costs, using your own numbers. If you like working in Excel, the free skill matrix template at andontool.com/skill-matrix-template is built the same way. And if your plant is near Sioux Center, Iowa, I'm happy to come walk the floor with you.