Ops Research... it's what I do. Or what I wish I was doing instead of whatever stupid tasker the Army has me running to ground. That said, your best bet is probably a system of equations set up with Excel (possibly using Solver) that take into consideration whatever your major planning factors are (hourly cost, tax issues, etc, etc... the ones Chris listed are a good start). You can then evaluate the relative total cost at each of your pre-selected 'approved' locations and see which might work best.
I've noticed that many of my colleagues have gotten reasonably well acquainted with building things in Excel to approximate the solutions available from the logistics planning software suites Chris mentioned, mostly because the AF and Army are too cheap to invest in real tools for their 'designated 50-lb brains' to use. Most of us can think of more elegant solutions, or at least see that a more elegant solution is available, but rely on the relative cheapness of processor cycles and just apply some sort of brute-force algorithm to get the boss an answer before the next good idea fairy shows up.
g-man wrote:I've noticed that many of my colleagues have gotten reasonably well acquainted with building things in Excel to approximate the solutions available from the logistics planning software suites Chris mentioned, mostly because the AF and Army are too cheap to invest in real tools for their 'designated 50-lb brains' to use. Most of us can think of more elegant solutions, or at least see that a more elegant solution is available, but rely on the relative cheapness of processor cycles and just apply some sort of brute-force algorithm to get the boss an answer before the next good idea fairy shows up.
I grew up in a company like that, but using Lotus 123 and Quattro Pro. I could make those things dance. I wrote some macros that turned a 6 hour a day task into a 15 minutes a day task that included coffee. Once people figured out what I was accomplishing, I became the office go to guy for spreadsheets. Haven't done the programming much since about 1999. I miss it.
Any point in picking up VBA so I can do it for fun in Excel, or is it a PITA like so much Microsoft stuff?
Note to self: start reading sig lines. They're actually quite amusing. :D
VBA has changed so much between the last few versions of Excel I've probably forgotten or know more old code that was phased out for no apparent reason that I care to think about. It's still good for lots of stuff, to include parsing strange formats into usable tables. The MS 'ribbon' concept really pissed me off since the 'tools' menu went completely away, and the various functions of said menu are squirreled away in the last places you can possibly think to look for them. Tools - Macro - VBA used to get you to a lot of functionality, but now I generally just go with Alt+F11 and work my way backward from the editor.
Bottom line: Yes, VBA is still very useful, even in the conflagration (yes, I meant that instead of configuration) in which it currently exists.
g-man wrote:The MS 'ribbon' concept really pissed me off since the 'tools' menu went completely away, and the various functions of said menu are squirreled away in the last places you can possibly think to look for them.
Ah. Just like AutoCAD. I hate ribbons.
Note to self: start reading sig lines. They're actually quite amusing. :D
