Calculating Experience / Learning Curve Series

PDNY

New Member
Joined
Jul 26, 2012
Messages
15
Hello to all,

I hope someone has seen this problem before and my explanation is clear.

BACKGROUND: I'm trying to have Excel calculate periodic (in this case monthly) sums for sales people hired at different periods where each one will be productive according to a calculated experience curve.

To give an example, let's say the experience curve is as follows:
Month 1Month 2Month 3
Expected Product A sales$100$200$300
Expected Product B sales$10$20$30

<tbody>
</tbody>

And salespersons are placed in the field in this order:
JanFebMar
New salespersons added210

<tbody>
</tbody>

The sales results would be:
JanFebMar
Expected Product A sales$200$500$800
Expected Product B sales$20$50$80
Total sales$220$550$1100

<tbody>
</tbody>

This means that once a sales person is in the field, that person is expected to generation Product A and Product B sales of $100 and $10, respectively, her first month and $200 and $20, respectively, her second month.

Note that not all sales persons are placed in the field at once hence they will have different sales results if they started selling at different periods.

In summary, I've viewed each period as sumproducts of two arrays:

Monthly product sales{100 + 10, 200 + 20, 300 + 30}
New salespersons additions{2, 1, 0}

<tbody>
</tbody>

Whereby each group of salespersons is indexed to a period's expected product sale and summed to give the period's total sale.

PROBLEM: While the above simple scenario is easily calculable with direct cell references, the problem is that Excel restricts cells to 255 characters, which we surpass once additional products and periods are added. I've used sales persons but the same problem could apply to an open enrollment course series, baseball RBIs or anything else

I've looked into using INDEX-MATCH as well as CHOOSE functions but they seem to work best where the result is for a single point, say, for one salesperson or for all salespersons starting in the same period. I can't say I've fully figured out applying them either.

I hope this is clear and someone can help out. Any suggestions are much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.
 

Excel Facts

Links? Where??
If Excel says you have links but you can't find them, go to Formulas, Name Manager. Look for old links to dead workbooks & delete.
Upvote 0

Forum statistics

Threads
1,215,776
Messages
6,126,830
Members
449,343
Latest member
DEWS2031

We've detected that you are using an adblocker.

We have a great community of people providing Excel help here, but the hosting costs are enormous. You can help keep this site running by allowing ads on MrExcel.com.
Allow Ads at MrExcel

Which adblocker are you using?

Disable AdBlock

Follow these easy steps to disable AdBlock

1)Click on the icon in the browser’s toolbar.
2)Click on the icon in the browser’s toolbar.
2)Click on the "Pause on this site" option.
Go back

Disable AdBlock Plus

Follow these easy steps to disable AdBlock Plus

1)Click on the icon in the browser’s toolbar.
2)Click on the toggle to disable it for "mrexcel.com".
Go back

Disable uBlock Origin

Follow these easy steps to disable uBlock Origin

1)Click on the icon in the browser’s toolbar.
2)Click on the "Power" button.
3)Click on the "Refresh" button.
Go back

Disable uBlock

Follow these easy steps to disable uBlock

1)Click on the icon in the browser’s toolbar.
2)Click on the "Power" button.
3)Click on the "Refresh" button.
Go back
Back
Top