Building a Master Production Schedule in EDGEBIC, Bucket by Bucket

Building a master production schedule in EDGEBIC by User Solutions means reading a stocked product's bucket-by-bucket demand grid, committing how many units to build and when, and firming that decision into a build-to-stock order the scheduling engine then places against real capacity. This walkthrough follows one product through that loop with every quantity shown. It is one of the worked examples we publish so you can judge the planning path by its arithmetic.

The MPS sits one level up from the scheduling engine and one level down from raw demand. For the concept, master production schedule explained is the companion; for the demand that feeds it, sales orders explained.

The Cast: Widget A, a Looming Stockout

Fairview Products stocks Widget A, a make-to-stock finished good. On hand today: 80 units. The planner opens the Inventory view, selects the MPS tab, picks Widget A, and chooses week buckets over a four-week window. The grid loads.

Read the columns left to right. Firm demand is the open balance on Confirmed sales order lines, bucketed by due date: two orders due Wk2 (60 units), one due Wk3 (40). Forecast is the statistical demand for each week. Gross requirements is the larger of firm and forecast after consumption, so Wk2 shows 60, not 90, because the firm orders have already consumed that week's forecast. Projected available balance (PAB) rolls forward: previous balance plus receipts minus gross requirements.

The KPI strip summarizes it:

• Current on hand: 80
• Min projected: minus 80
• Projected stockout date: Wk2 start

The Wk2 row is flagged: PAB has gone negative. The system suggests a build quantity of 110 units for Wk2, enough to recover the balance above safety stock through Wk4 given the product's lot rules.

Step 1: Why the Grid Shows What It Shows

Two ideas make the grid trustworthy.

First, firm demand comes from real sales order lines, not from open make-to-order jobs. Counting an order and the job created to fulfill it would double the demand. So firm demand is sourced from the open balances of Confirmed sales order lines only. A Draft order's lines do not appear. This is why confirming an order matters: it is the moment its demand starts driving the plan.

Second, the suggested and committed quantities are kept separate from the projected balance until a build is actually firmed. The MPS Quantity column is the planner's committed decision; it is not speculatively rolled into PAB. Only a firmed order, which becomes a real scheduled receipt, moves the balance. This sidesteps the trap of a committed-but-not-built quantity appearing as phantom supply.

Step 2: Commit a Build Quantity

The planner accepts the suggestion. Click the Wk2 row, type 110 into the MPS Quantity field, and click Save Build Qty. The bucket's status badge changes to Firm. No manufacturing order exists yet; this is a commitment, not a build. The Committed MPS card in the KPI strip now reads 110.

Saving is deliberate and reversible. The planner can adjust the number, save again, and nothing downstream changes until the bucket is firmed.

Step 3: Firm the Bucket Into an Order

Widget A has a lead time of 3 days. The planner selects the Wk2 bucket, sets the due date to Wk2's Monday, and clicks Firm.

EDGEBIC does this atomically, in one transaction:

releaseDate = Wk2 Monday minus 3 days = last Friday

ManufacturingOrder
  Quantity          = 110
  DueDate           = Wk2 Monday
  TargetStartDate   = last Friday
  StartTime         = last Friday
  BuildToInventory  = true
  DemandSource      = MPS
  Status            = Scheduled

The MPS Quantity is a decimal, but a manufacturing order quantity is a whole number, so a fractional commitment always rounds up: 99.5 committed becomes a 110-unit order here because the planner committed exactly 110. The bucket's status badge flips to Released and shows the new order's ID.

Firming is idempotent. If the planner clicks Firm again on a bucket whose order still exists, EDGEBIC returns the same order rather than creating a duplicate. And if the order is later deleted out of band, the grid quietly demotes the bucket back to Firm so it can be re-firmed, while the anomaly report flags the stale link for cleanup.

Step 4: The Stockout Resolves, Then the Engine Schedules

Reload the grid. The firmed order now appears as a real scheduled receipt in Wk2:

The projected balance never goes negative now. The stockout is resolved on paper.

The build-to-stock order is also sitting in the manufacturing order grid, marked build-to-inventory. On the next Drive Schedule run, the finite capacity engine reads it and places its routing across work centers, starting no earlier than last Friday, exactly like any other job. Its build hours compete for real machine time and appear on the same Gantt as customer orders. That is the whole point of routing a stock build through the same scheduler: inventory replenishment is not a separate paper exercise, it is a job on the floor.

Step 5: The Two Fences

Two per-product fences shape the near-term plan:

Set them on the product. A high-turnover consumable might use a 7-day demand fence; a long-lead casting might use 60. Inside the planning fence, a committed quantity is protected from an automatic planning run; beyond it, in the open horizon, it can be revised. A planner who commits 50 units for a bucket inside the planning fence can trust it will not be zeroed by a rerun; a commitment in the open horizon should be double-checked after one.

What This Walkthrough Proves

1. The MPS projects forward. It catches a stockout weeks early by rolling the balance instead of waiting for on hand to hit zero.
2. Firm demand is real orders. Only Confirmed sales order lines count, so demand is never double-counted against the jobs that fulfill it.
3. Committed is not built. The MPS Quantity column stays out of the balance until a firmed order becomes a real receipt.
4. Firming is one atomic step. The build-to-stock order and the bucket stamp share one transaction, and re-firming a live bucket never duplicates.
5. Stock builds schedule like jobs. The firmed order competes for machine time on the same Gantt as everything else.
6. Fences protect the near term. The demand fence suppresses stale forecast; the planning fence protects committed quantities.

From a Plan to a Schedule

The MPS turns demand into build decisions; the scheduler turns build decisions into dated operations. The natural neighbors of this walkthrough are the demand side, from a sales order to a scheduled job, and the single-product replenishment loop, a make-to-stock replenishment cycle. When a stock build feeds a make-to-order job in the same run, consume from stock netting shows how the engine avoids double-building.

User Solutions has helped manufacturers plan production since 1991, including Cummins across 33 locations. Contact us for a demo and bring one stocked product: we will build its MPS with you.