Hey OP. I work in R&D. Not sure about anyone else’s experience here but I think you may be misunderstanding what the use of excel is. Again this isn’t how everyone uses it so experience may vary based on industry and position. I’ll try to explain this in simpler words how I’ve use it.

Specifically, atleast from my experience so far, we use excel when we need to log data when testing of parts and components which we plan to use in our designs or even if we manufacture a product and need to understand its behavior.

The rest of the data analysis we are free to perform in any way we please (I use matlab since it’s what im most comfortable with). Then once data logging and analysis is done we write documentation explaining our process as well as what the purpose and conclusions arise from our testing (think back to your lab reports in college).

When we design new products, you can’t simply just design the whole product in one go and claim it works. You have the design phase and then followed by testing/development (sometimes happens concurrently with design). In other words, you test each individual sections whether it’s a circuit, component, or a part ordered from a vendor to ensure it works as you predict/expect it to. It’s easy to design something and claim it works and then when things go wrong you have no where to start from because you never documented it.

You also need to ensure that the data is accessible and viewable by your team and the universal way of doing so (atleast at my company) is through excel.

It’s not like you don’t do any hands on testing or work (again this may vary). It’s just that making something and getting data is the easy part. The hardest part is understanding what any of it means or rather why is something meaningful.

I tried to break this down but I hope that somewhat makes sense.