Excel easier.
SQL and I have to ask how much experience in setting up a database and doing complicated queries or data mining.
For some here Sequel is like falling off a log for others it can be hard to work with.
Who else has to deal with the system you will build after you are gone?
Me, I'm like all over database but have seen some Excel systems that were amazing in use in very, very large shops.
One does not expect to see this in the thousand employee per site level but it works.
Bob
Good points.
To OP.
Keep your current hard copy system in place as a backup. When everything is changed up oversights and often bad information and incomplete information can be placed in if one is not very careful.
There were jobs that came up at one shop who had done a lot of work and done well overall with the setup sheets for decades where several jobs had recurring problems.
After I was there for a while I noted there were certain jobs which always produced a scrap part on the first piece consistently.
Everyone who had been there for a while knew this and despite heads up on the topic no changes were made to the original program nor paperwork to correct those flaws in a determined manner.
Improved programs and practices were most often never capitalized upon nor even reviewed and changed. Some machinists just made changes to the program loaded themselves and ran the job better with less scrap and more efficiently.
No permanent change came to the digital record or paper record. True if you might think such knowledge gave advantage in the quality of work one machinist who knew and fixed the problem vs another who did not. It showed in scrapped parts. Oh this is the way we have been doing it for 20 years! Yep I get it you have done great!
I have watched this kind of thing and have been involved with improving this kind of glitch in a shop also. Past a certain point as a new person in a shop not often yet at times I could make some recommendation/s about something and back away as people do not like the work to improve a system which has evolved fairly well over decade/s nor do they like to have anyone bring up anything.
Sometimes change is avoided especially when a shop has plenty of work to do.
I make my own notes for each quirky job and keep working it on my own taking full responsibility personally. I generally will not go out of my way to tell someone about any problems as they generally resist any helpful effort to point this out.
Now that business is slower for most shops what better time is there to do this? You may think the answer is that now is the time yet I propose it is better to do it when it is busy sustained over a complete cycle of time do it in real time as attention to detail is highest. Without input and cooperation by machinists who know the problems you would do better paying a fortune teller to find the mistakes in setup sheets and programs that are there.
Usually faced with the work in that task and it is thankless work most will not bother with the task.
You wish to make things better so do not worry about timing if you get the go ahead do it in whatever manner that you can. Push your superiors to support you doing the most extensive and useful method the do it and insist on no diversions to doing it. Get er done.
It becomes better to do it as you go along but you must have good communication between the machinists and management and programming. Good communication between machinists who alter bad programs which are never changed just to do a job right are not in a good working situation with programming.
Everyone needs to be sure the repository is as acurite and accessible as possible.