Master Production Schedule in EDGEBIC: The Build Plan Explained

Master production schedule software answers one question that a capacity schedule cannot: how many of each finished good should you build in each future period, before any specific job exists? EDGEBIC by User Solutions answers it with a grid. One row per planning bucket per product shows the demand arriving, the stock projected to remain, and what the system suggests building. One editable column holds the planner's own decision. One button turns that decision into a build-to-stock manufacturing order that the finite capacity engine schedules against real work center capacity.

This post explains what the MPS is inside EDGEBIC, why the module exists as a distinct layer, and when a shop actually needs one. For the wider planning picture the MPS sits inside (ledger, projected balances, forecasting, replenishment), read the inventory and planning pillar. For the generic discipline independent of any product, the master production schedule guide covers the classic MPS process.

Where the Master Production Schedule Sits

Planning has two halves that most shops keep in separate heads. The first half is quantity: what to build and roughly when. The second half is capacity: which machine runs it, in what order, starting at what hour. The MPS is the bridge.

Above it sits raw demand. That means forecast entries for expected sales, plus confirmed sales order lines for orders you actually hold. Below it sits the finite capacity scheduling engine, which takes manufacturing orders and places them on real work centers around real shifts, holidays, and existing load.

The MPS is where a person decides. The projection engine can calculate that you will run out of Widget A in week 2. It cannot decide whether you build 110 now, 200 next month, or nothing at all because the customer is about to redesign the part. That decision is what the MPS grid captures, timestamps, and turns into an order.

Master production scheduling and time fences are standard planning vocabulary rather than product-specific inventions. The professional body that maintains that vocabulary is ASCM, formerly APICS. EDGEBIC implements the standard shape and connects its output straight into capacity, which is the part most planning tools leave to a spreadsheet.

One Row Per Bucket: How the Grid Is Built

A bucket is a planning period: a day, a week, or a 28 day period. You pick the granularity, the horizon, and the product, and the grid loads one row per bucket.

Above the grid, a summary strip carries current on-hand from the ledger, total demand, total committed build, total suggested, the minimum projected balance across the horizon, and the first date the projection goes negative. Those last two are the ones planners read first. A minimum projected balance of minus 80 and a stockout date of week 2 tell you the whole story before you look at a single row.

For the arithmetic behind projected available balance and available to promise, see the planning pillar; the MPS grid reuses the same projection rather than computing its own.

Firm Demand Comes From Sales Order Lines

This is the rule that keeps the numbers honest, and it is worth understanding before you trust any MPS row.

Firm demand is sourced from open lines on confirmed sales orders. A line's open balance is its ordered quantity minus the quantity already shipped, and it is bucketed by the line's due date. Open make-to-order manufacturing orders are not counted as firm demand.

That exclusion looks strange until you follow the paper trail. A make-to-order job exists because a customer ordered something. The sales order line is the demand. The job is the response to it. Count both and you have doubled one customer's order, inflated gross requirements, and talked yourself into building stock nobody asked for.

Build-to-stock orders behave differently and correctly stay on the supply side. When a build-to-stock order is open, it appears as a scheduled receipt in the bucket where it is expected to complete. Demand pulls the balance down, receipts push it back up, and the same order never plays both roles.

One practical consequence: a line on a draft sales order contributes nothing. If a planner builds lines but never confirms the order, the MPS grid shows no firm demand for it, and the forecast alone drives the plan. See how sales orders drive demand for the full path from order entry to demand.

The Three States of an MPS Bucket

Every bucket carries a status, and each state means something specific about how far a decision has travelled.

Suggested. No stored entry exists for this bucket. The MPS build column reads zero. The system may be recommending a quantity in the Suggested column, but nobody has agreed to it.

Firm. A planner typed a quantity and saved it. The commitment is recorded and survives a reload. No manufacturing order exists yet. This is the state where a plan can still be revised freely.

Released. The bucket has been firmed into a real build-to-stock manufacturing order, and the row stores which order it created. From here the order is the plan; the MPS row is the audit trail that explains where it came from.

The separation between Firm and Released matters more than it first appears. It gives you a place to hold a decision that is agreed but not yet released to the floor, which is exactly what a weekly planning meeting produces.

Worked Example: Widget A Heads for a Stockout

Widget A is make-to-stock with 80 units on hand. Weekly buckets. Two confirmed sales orders land next week, one the week after, and the forecast expects 30 per week throughout.

The summary strip reads minimum projected minus 80, projected stockout at the start of week 2. The engine suggests 110 for week 2: enough to carry through week 4 given a 60 unit lot minimum.

The planner agrees, types 110 into the MPS build column for week 2, and saves. The row goes to Firm and the committed total reads 110. Nothing has changed on the shop floor and nothing has changed in the projected balance, which still shows the hole.

Then the planner firms the bucket. Widget A has a three day lead time, so a week 2 Monday due date produces a start date of the previous Friday. A build-to-stock order is created for 110 units. The row flips to Released.

On the next load, the projection sees that order as a scheduled receipt of 110 in week 2:

The stockout is gone, and it went away because a real order now exists rather than because a number was typed into a planning column.

When Your Shop Actually Needs an MPS

Not every shop does. A pure make-to-order job shop that builds only what customers order, with no stocked finished goods, gets very little from a master production schedule. Its sales orders already are the build plan.

You need one when any of the following is true:

• You stock finished goods or sub-assemblies and build them ahead of demand.
• Your lead time to the customer is shorter than your production lead time, so something has to be built before the order arrives.
• Demand for a family of items is lumpy, and building to each order means constant changeovers.
• Two people in the building disagree about how much of item X is going to be built next month, and neither can point at a document.

That last one is the most common and the least discussed. The MPS grid is a decision record. The value of the Firm state is that a build commitment exists somewhere other than in a planner's memory.

What the MPS Deliberately Does Not Do

Three limits are worth stating plainly, because each one is a design decision rather than a gap.

A committed build quantity does not improve the projected balance. Until a bucket is Released and its order exists, the MPS build column stays its own column. This avoids a specific failure: showing supply for an order that was never created, and then showing it twice once it is.

The planning fence does not lock anything. It flags near-term buckets as frozen and suppresses automatic suggestions inside the window. It does not stop a planner from firming inside it. The fence is planner discipline made visible, not an enforced constraint. The time fences deep dive covers exactly what each fence changes.

Firming does not guarantee the date. The new order joins the queue and competes for capacity like every other job. If the shop is full, it can finish after its own due date, and the schedule will show that rather than hide it. That is finite capacity working as intended, and it is the difference between finite and infinite capacity planning.

Where to Go Next

The MPS is one screen in a connected planning layer, and it is most useful once the products underneath it are configured correctly.

• How to work the MPS grid walks the setup and the daily loop, field by field.
• Firm demand, forecast, and time fences explains the mechanism behind the numbers.
• MPS mistakes covers the configuration errors that make a grid lie to you.
• Products and planning attributes covers build method, lead time, and the fence settings each product carries.
• The EDGEBIC complete guide maps every module in the platform.