Ok, Lets start over from scratch. I have been attempting to build a data base and everyone keeps telling me to normalize and use lookup tables. I have normalized as best as i could but do not really see the benefit to lookup tables but i',m open minded.
I manage performance in a warehouse. the associates fill out a daily tracker that tells me what they do, when they do it, how many trips or cycles they did in the time they were doing the job and what exceptions or "problems" they had to stop productivity to deal with.
Here is an example of a tracker.
From this I was going to create three tables
Black box - Associate information
Red box - daily task (can be up to 15)
Green box - Exceptions (can be up to 12 per task)
my issue is that not all associate do the same jobs or the same amount of work. one might do 1 job all day while another ( like a truck loader) might do 15. My thoughts were to create fields for all 15 jobs even though most might be "place holders" if they are not being used by that particular associate that day. I have been told this is not normalization and very inefficient and that I should use lookup tables.
I do not see how lookup tables will help but I don't know. How do i design this thing so that if one guy needs 1 task i'm not mucking up the DB with 14 fields that are not being used but I can still pull them out when i need them?
I have been looking all over the interwebs and can not find an example of anything like this that I can look at. I am ready to trash access and just go back to excell which I know.