From Excel and RMX to EDGEBIC: The Growth Path

Moving from Excel or RMX to EDGEBIC is an import, not a rebuild: the spreadsheets you already keep become the source of your data, mapped once through import masks. In EDGEBIC by User Solutions, products, work centers, routings, and orders come in from Excel or CSV, and each mask remembers your column mapping so re-running it is a single click. RMX (Resource Manager for Excel), the spreadsheet-based classic of the line, remains supported and feeds the same import path. You climb from a spreadsheet to a finite capacity engine without re-entering your inputs.

When the spreadsheet starts to break

Almost every shop starts scheduling in Excel, and it works until it does not. The breaking point is predictable: more than a handful of machines, several overlapping jobs, and changes coming in daily. At that scale a spreadsheet has three problems it cannot solve.

It cannot check finite capacity, so it will happily show two jobs on the same machine at the same time. Changes do not cascade, so moving one job leaves every downstream operation stale. And there is no Gantt or what-if analysis without hours of manual effort. The symptom is familiar: a missed constraint becomes a late shipment, and nobody saw it coming because the spreadsheet could not show the downstream impact.

That is the signal to grow. The good news is that growing does not mean abandoning what you built.

Your spreadsheets are the on-ramp

EDGEBIC imports from Excel and CSV, which means the files you already maintain are the source of the migration, not something you throw away. RMX takes this even further: as the spreadsheet-based member of the User Solutions line, RMX already holds your data in exactly the form EDGEBIC reads. Either way, your inputs come across as data.

This is what makes the step up gentle. You are not re-entering years of work. You are pointing EDGEBIC at the spreadsheet you already keep and letting it read the data in. RMX remains supported throughout, so you can run both and compare before you commit. The full path is on the RMDB to EDGEBIC upgrade guide, which covers the whole line including the RMX and Excel growth path.

The mechanism: one mask per entity

The move has a simple shape: build one import mask per kind of data.

• Products. Map your item columns to EDGEBIC product fields. The mechanics are in how to import products from Excel in EDGEBIC.
• Work centers. Map machine names, capacities, and rates.
• Routings. Map product, operation sequence, work center, and times. The two-pass routing import reads every row first, then wires the step sequences, so operations come in correctly connected regardless of row order.
• Orders. Map your open sales orders so the schedule has demand to place.

Each mask is mapped once and saved. Re-running it after a spreadsheet update is a single click, which is what makes a parallel run practical. The general mechanics of building a mask are in EDGEBIC import masks explained.

A worked example

A three-machine shop schedules in one large Excel workbook that is starting to break: rush orders slip through, and nobody can see the downstream effect of a change.

1. Keep the workbook. The planner does not touch the existing files. They export the relevant tabs to products.csv, workcenters.csv, routings.csv, and orders.csv.
2. Build four masks. In EDGEBIC they map each file to its entity fields once, saving the masks.
3. Import. They run the masks. Products, machines, routings (sequenced by the two-pass import), and orders land in EDGEBIC.
4. Schedule. EDGEBIC schedules the three machines against real finite capacity, and the Gantt shows, for the first time, where a rush order actually collides with committed work.
5. Run in parallel. For a few weeks the planner keeps updating the familiar workbook and re-runs the masks to refresh EDGEBIC, comparing the two. When the team trusts EDGEBIC's dates, ownership moves over.

The workbook that was breaking became the on-ramp, and three machines became an easy first cell.

What you gain on the other side

Once the data is in, EDGEBIC does what the spreadsheet could not. It schedules against finite capacity, so it never double-books a machine. Changes cascade to downstream operations automatically. The interactive Gantt shows the plan and, once the kiosk is in use, planned-versus-actual. And quoting simulation lets you promise a date built from real capacity instead of a lead-time guess.

The inputs stayed the same; the capability underneath them changed. That is the whole idea of a growth path: you keep your data and gain an engine.

The transition is gradual, not a switch

The spreadsheet-to-EDGEBIC move does not have to be a single event. Because the import masks are saved and one click to re-run, you can keep the workbook as your working copy for as long as it takes to trust EDGEBIC, refreshing the schedule from the spreadsheet whenever the data changes.

A comfortable rhythm is to let the spreadsheet stay the place you enter data while EDGEBIC becomes the place you schedule and quote. Each time orders or routings change, you re-run the masks and EDGEBIC reflects the update. Over a few weeks the planners compare EDGEBIC's finite capacity dates against the spreadsheet's manual guesses and watch the software catch collisions the workbook could not. When the team trusts the dates, ownership of the data moves into EDGEBIC and the spreadsheet retires from scheduling duty. There is no forced switch, so a small shop can adopt at exactly the pace its people are ready for.

Pitfalls to watch

• Blank cells can overwrite values. Check how each mask handles empty cells before a large import, so a blank does not clear a field you meant to keep.
• Import in dependency order. Load products and work centers before routings and orders, so the references resolve.
• Keep names consistent. Routings and orders link to products and work centers by name; keep the spelling identical across files.
• Verify capacity. Set shifts, holidays, and calendars, then compare the capacity numbers against what your spreadsheet assumed before trusting a schedule.

The takeaway

Growing from Excel or RMX to EDGEBIC is an upgrade path, not a restart. Your spreadsheets are the source: one import mask per entity, mapped once and saved, brings products, work centers, routings, and orders across, with the two-pass routing import handling sequence. RMX stays supported so you can run both and compare, and when the team trusts EDGEBIC's finite capacity dates, ownership shifts over. Start with the RMDB to EDGEBIC guide, see the platform in full on the EDGEBIC overview, and when you plan the move, look at running a pilot on one cell first.