The typical starting point
The MES export lands in a shared folder at the start of each month. Analysts clean it by hand, build pivot tables, export PDFs and email them to leadership. The work is repetitive, it cannot start until the export is complete, and mistakes in the source are usually spotted only when someone senior reads the report.
How I would build it
I would replace the manual cleanup with a Power Query pipeline that ingests the export, types every column, normalises text fields and runs explicit validation checks (missing order IDs, negative amounts, out-of-range dates). If a check fails, the refresh stops and the owner gets an email. A VBA macro then refreshes the workbook, exports the summary to PDF and emails it to the right people; Power Automate or Task Scheduler can trigger the whole run.
What it is designed to deliver
Once a build like this is in place, the close becomes a refresh rather than a week of copy-paste, and bad data is caught at the first step instead of in the final report. Every query and macro is documented in the handover so your own team can maintain it.
