How Operator Time-Off Reshapes the Schedule in EDGEBIC

In EDGEBIC by User Solutions, recording a time-off range for an operator removes their hours from every skill pool for those dates, so the next reschedule routes work around the absence. Time-off is the people-equivalent of a work center holiday: a PTO block, a training week, or sick leave that the schedule has to respect. Enter it once and the engine treats that operator as unavailable for the range, staffing steps with someone else qualified or sliding them to when the person is back. It is the part of the labor model that keeps a plan matched to who will actually be on the floor.

A schedule that assigns work to someone on vacation is fiction, and a busy shop discovers that fiction at the worst moment. Time-off tracking moves the discovery into the plan.

Recording a Time-Off Range

You record time-off on the operator's Time-off tab as a date range with a reason.

Both ends are inclusive. A range ending Friday means the operator is off through all of Friday and back Saturday. You enter the first and last days off, matching how people actually book leave, rather than the day they return. The engine evaluates time-off per date, so the whole range counts as unavailable.

How It Reaches the Plan

Operator availability is read at run time, not continuously. Recording time-off changes the data, but nothing moves until a reschedule runs. EDGEBIC does not fire an automatic replan when you add an absence, which is deliberate: you can enter several vacations at once and then schedule a single time. The practical habit is to record known absences ahead and reschedule so the plan reflects staffing.

When a run does happen, the engine builds each skill pool for each shift and date. An operator on time-off for a date contributes zero hours to every pool they would otherwise fill on that date. That is the whole mechanism. A step needing the skill draws from whoever is qualified, rostered, and not on time-off; if the absence empties the pool, the step slides.

Time-off stacks on top of the roster and the machine calendar. A window must first survive the work center's holidays, downtime, and shift hours, then the roster decides who normally works that shift, and time-off then subtracts anyone absent. Rosters are a weekly pattern; time-off is the exception that overrides it for specific dates, exactly like a machine's weekly hours plus its holiday exceptions.

A Worked Example

Take two weld cells, Weld-A and Weld-B, each an eight-hour day shift Monday to Friday. The required skill is an Inconel weld certification. Two operators hold it, Joe and Mia, both rostered Monday to Friday. A step on Weld-A is pinned to Joe. Joe records time-off Monday to Wednesday.

• Without the pin, Monday's pool for the Inconel skill would still hold Mia's eight hours, so the step would run Monday staffed by Mia.
• With the pin, Joe is the only candidate the engine will consider, and Mia is filtered out of the pool for this step. Monday through Wednesday his available hours are zero, so the step slides to Thursday, Joe's first day back.

The slide is visible on the Gantt, and that is the intent. A named person's absence must surface as schedule movement, not vanish into a substitution the planner never approved. For how pinning works in full, see how the operator pin pins a person to a job.

Now drop the pin. Joe's Monday-to-Wednesday absence still zeroes his hours, but Mia covers the work, so the step runs on schedule staffed by her. Same absence, different outcome, because an unpinned step draws from the whole qualified pool while a pinned one waits for its one person.

Pinned Versus Unpinned Absence

The difference above is worth stating plainly, because it is the choice you make every time you decide whether to pin.

• Unpinned step: time-off matters only if it empties the whole qualified pool. If another certified, rostered operator is free, the work simply moves to them and the schedule holds.
• Pinned step: time-off on the pinned person always slides the step, because the rest of the pool is never a fallback. The absence becomes a deliberate, visible slip.

Neither is more correct; they serve different needs. Pin when a specific person must do the work and you want their absence to show. Leave it on Auto when any qualified hand will do and you want the plan to route around absences automatically.

Why Visible Slip Beats Silent Substitution

The design choice throughout the labor model is to fail loudly rather than quietly. A schedule that silently reassigns a pinned welder's work to someone the planner never chose looks fine on screen and breaks on the floor. A schedule that slides the step, and shows the slide, hands the planner a real decision: approve the later date, arrange coverage, or cross-train. That honesty is the same discipline behind immutable actuals and the loud failure when a required skill has no qualified operator. The plan is only worth trusting if it refuses to pretend.

Time-off composes with the rest of the model too. A person must still be certified and unexpired, and rostered on the shift, before their hours count at all, and the attend fraction still decides how much of them a run consumes. Time-off governs one question: is this person present on this date.

The Bottom Line

Operator time-off is how EDGEBIC keeps a plan matched to who is actually on the floor. Record an inclusive date range and the engine zeroes that operator's hours for those dates on the next reschedule, staffing steps with another qualified operator or sliding them to when the person returns. Pinned steps slide rather than hand off, so a named absence shows as a visible slip you can act on. Nothing moves until you schedule, so enter absences ahead and reschedule with intent. See the whole labor model in context in the shop floor execution guide, and explore the platform at EDGEBIC.