Your hyperlinked worksheet lists products by production lines in the rows and maps out planning weeks in the columns. It's a nifty little tool serving you well in cases where the near impossible was demanded of the supply chain team.

You might have gone undetected for years. But you have been found out. The CIA (Crimes in IT Agency) is descending.

Let me read the charges. You have created a tailored tool to meet a need no existing system could satisfy. You have made data accessible in a user-friendly and dynamic way. You can now manipulate data from different angles, without IT writing a new report query. Finally, you did not wait for another few years for advanced planning or forecasting software to be integrated with your enterprise planning system.

You say working out the plans on paper is too laborious and that at least you are downloading and uploading data to and from the manufacturing resource planning system. You know the spreadsheet is a high-risk tool as only you know how to operate it. But you say the responsiveness and flexibility expected of your team could not be achieved with a paper-based process. Yet they say you have no evidence.

There you have it. As far as IT is concerned, you are guilty as charged! Or are you?

Hugh Williams is founder of supply chain planning specialist consultancy Hughenden.