A Routing Re-Import Wiped Steps I Added: Why, and How to Avoid It

A routing re-import replaces every step for an end product with exactly what the file contains, so it is a full rebuild rather than a merge, and any step you added by hand and left out of the file is removed. EDGEBIC by User Solutions treats a routing as an ordered whole, and importing one recreates that product's steps from the source, which is why hand-added operations vanish when the file does not include them.

This post sits in the EDGEBIC troubleshooting guide and is the replace-behavior companion to import masks explained and how to add a step to an existing routing.

What You Are Seeing

You added a step to a product's routing in the app (a de-burr, an inspection, a note), then later re-imported that product's routing from a file to change something unrelated. After the run, your added step is gone, and often the step order matches the file rather than what you last saw. Nothing failed. The import did precisely what a routing import does: it rebuilt the product's steps from the file.

Why It Happens

A routing is not a bag of independent rows you can patch one at a time. It is an ordered sequence with dependencies between steps, so an import handles it as a unit.

• Replace, not merge. When you import a routing, the steps in the file for each end product become the complete new step list for that product. The old steps are wiped and recreated from the file.
• Anything absent is removed. A step that exists in the app but is not present in the incoming file is not part of the new set, so the rebuild drops it. That includes steps a planner added by hand and steps from an earlier file version that the current file omits.
• Order comes from the file. Because the routing is recreated, the sequence is whatever the file defines, not whatever you last arranged in the app.

This is deliberate. A partial merge of an ordered routing risks orphaned links, duplicated steps, and a sequence that no longer matches the file the planner is holding. The clean contract is: the file is the whole routing, and importing it makes that routing so.

How to Fix It

First, decide who owns each routing: the file or the app. Then keep them from fighting.

1. If the file should own the routing, put every step in the file. Add the hand-created steps (the de-burr, the note, the inspection) into the source export so the file is the complete, correct routing. A complete file recreates the complete routing, edits included.
2. If the app should own the routing, stop re-importing that product. Maintain those routings in the app and reserve import for products whose routing genuinely lives in the source system. Editing in the app is the right tool for a one-field change.
3. For a single correction, edit the step in the app. If all you needed was one setup time fixed, change it on the step rather than re-importing the whole routing and inheriting the file's step set and order.
4. Recover a lost step by adding it back. A dropped step is not corrupt data; it is simply absent. Re-add it in the app, or include it in the file and re-import once.

How to Prevent It

• Assign one owner per routing. Decide, per product, whether the file or the app is authoritative, and do not edit the other side. Mixing an authoritative file import with app-side edits on the same routing loses the edits every time.
• Make the export complete. If routings are imported on a schedule, have the upstream export carry the full step list, including steps planners rely on, so the rebuild reproduces them.
• Exclude hand-maintained products from the batch. Keep products that planners edit by hand out of the scheduled routing import so a nightly run cannot overwrite them.
• Change one field in the app, not with a re-import. A routing import is the wrong instrument for a single value. Use it when you want the file's whole routing in place.
• Confirm the step set after an import. Open the routing after re-importing and check the steps and order match your intent, so a surprise removal is caught the same day, not weeks later on the shop floor.

If the routing came in with the right steps but the wrong sequence, that is a different problem covered in my imported routing came in out of order. If the hours on the steps were off, see my imported hours came in wrong.