EDGEBIC + Made2Manage Integration FAQ: The Questions Shops Ask First

These are the questions Made2Manage shops ask in the first conversation, answered without hedging: there is no connector, the interface is your existing exports, nothing is installed in the ERP, and nothing you import can disturb a job already running. Each answer stands on its own, so skip to whichever one you came for.

EDGEBIC by User Solutions is a finite capacity scheduling platform that sits beside your ERP. The full walkthrough is the complete Made2Manage integration guide, and the field-level detail is in the Made2Manage to EDGEBIC mapping reference.

Does EDGEBIC connect through a Made2Manage connector?

No, and that is deliberate. EDGEBIC integrates through reusable import masks that read Excel, CSV, delimited text, or a database source. You map your export's columns onto EDGEBIC's fields once and save the mask; every later run is two clicks. Because there is no connector, there is no add-on in the ERP, no integration credential, no schema change to carry through an upgrade, and nothing to version-match when either side updates. A connector is a dependency. A file or a view is not.

Does EDGEBIC replace Made2Manage?

No. Made2Manage stays the system of record for quotes, jobs, purchasing, and costing. EDGEBIC reads exports, builds a finite capacity schedule against real shift hours and real machine counts, and hands back dates and dispatch lists as Excel files. Nothing about how your team uses the ERP changes. The general case for the split is in why ERP needs a scheduling add-on.

What exactly has to come out of Made2Manage?

Four exports carry a complete scheduling model, and a fifth is optional. Items (an identifier is the only mandatory column). Work centers (an identifier, plus capacity detail). Routings (end product, step name, an operation flag, and hours per unit). Open jobs (item, quantity, and a date). Optionally, labor (job number, work center, date, and hours or pieces). Any report that saves to Excel or CSV is a valid source, and a database view works equally well.

Our routers quote setup in minutes and run in hours. Do we convert by hand?

No. Set a conversion factor on each column in the routing mask: 0.016667 turns a 30-minute setup cell into 0.5 hours, while the run column that is already in hours carries no factor. Seconds use 0.000278, and a time quoted per 100 pieces uses 0.01. The factor is stored on the mask, so every future import converts identically without anyone remembering to do it, and the per-run log records every row if you want to audit the math.

How long until the first real schedule?

Most shops see a first finite capacity schedule from their own data in the first working session, and a tuned one within the week. The documented benchmark in the User Solutions lineage is the Plastilite integration on Fourth Shift: 5 days, Monday to Friday, from first export to a complete optimized schedule with dates synchronized back to the ERP. That figure belongs to that case rather than being a promise, but the method is what repeats: export, map, import, schedule, tune.

Do we have to clean our routings first?

No, and the attempt usually costs a month. Import what Made2Manage holds today, schedule it, and compare the dates with what your planner believes. The disagreements are your defect list and they arrive specific: a wrong hours-per-unit shows up as a job finishing implausibly early, a missing setup time shows up as a machine that changes over for free. Because a routing re-import wipes and recreates that item's steps, each corrected file replaces the last cleanly.

Do imported jobs schedule themselves?

No, and the separation is deliberate. An import changes data; the scheduler changes the plan. Imported jobs appear as unscheduled demand until you run the scheduler, and before the run starts a confirmation states the scope in plain numbers: how many jobs are new and how many existing jobs are being rescheduled. You always know the blast radius before anything moves.

Can an import disturb jobs already running?

No, for two independent reasons. Every scheduled job carries a frozen snapshot of the routing it was planned with, so a routing re-import affects future jobs and leaves work in progress alone. And recorded work is never moved by any run: an operation with an actual start and an actual end is historical fact, and no reschedule, mode, or setting will shift it. This is one of the few unconditional promises the engine makes.

What if the same file is imported twice?

Nothing bad happens, on any entity type. Master data comes back Reused (matched and deliberately left untouched) unless you enabled updates for that run. Routing imports wipe and recreate an item's steps rather than appending, so steps never accumulate. Actuals always overwrite the days a file carries, so a double import never double-counts and a corrected file simply fixes the earlier numbers.

We have four identical machines in one work center. How does EDGEBIC know that?

Through the machine-count column on the work center file, which most ERP exports leave out because a work center is usually modeled as one resource with a capacity figure. Fill the instance count deliberately for every multi-machine center: a cell of four machines imported as one produces a plan roughly four times too long, and it fails quietly, since nothing errors and the dates are simply wrong. The arithmetic is in how EDGEBIC calculates work center capacity.

Can we automate the export and the import?

Partly, and it is worth being precise about which half. The export side automates well: a scheduled extract or a database view that presents stable columns removes the only manual step that ever gets forgotten. The import side stays a deliberate act, because the result dialog exists to be read. A run that reports 40 unexpected Failed rows is information a person needs to see before the schedule is built on top of it. Most shops settle on automated exports plus a two-minute human import.

What can import never bring across?

The settings that most change what a schedule looks like, because no ERP export has a column for them. Work center groups (machine pools re-shopped on every reschedule, with per-member efficiency factors). The sequence-dependent setup matrix that lets the optimizer sequence work to cut changeover. Operator skills and rosters. Bottleneck anchoring. Lot streaming with transfer batches. Each is configured once inside EDGEBIC and then applies to every imported job afterwards. The EDGEBIC product overview maps them and the ERP integration hub explains where the import boundary sits.

Who runs this day to day?

The planner, in about twenty minutes each morning, without IT. Involve IT exactly once, to make the four exports saved reports or database views with stable columns. After that the routine is export, run the saved masks, run the scheduler, publish the dispatch lists. The same questions for other platforms are answered in the Acumatica and MIE Trak Pro FAQs, and the wider category framing is on the ERP integration hub.

Still deciding?

The fastest way to settle any of this is your own export. Pull this week's open jobs and a routing file, then bring them to a demo: mapping them live takes minutes, and you leave having watched your own shop scheduled against its own capacity.