How Piece Counts Feed the EDGEBIC Schedule

In EDGEBIC by User Solutions, pieces and hours are two views of the same work, linked by an effective rate. When an operator counts good pieces at the kiosk, EDGEBIC can derive the hours, roll the good pieces into the day's actuals, and feed that reality back into the schedule. Piece counts production scheduling depends on this duality: some work centers are naturally measured in hours, others in pieces, and the plan needs both to speak the same language. This article explains how the conversion works and how good piece counts reach the plan.

A machine shop times its mills; a packaging line counts its cartons. Both are producing, and both need to feed one schedule. EDGEBIC handles this by treating hours and pieces as convertible through a rate, so you can log whichever side is natural for a given work center and get the other for free.

The Effective Rate

The link between pieces and hours is the effective rate, expressed in pieces per hour. EDGEBIC computes it from the routing:

effective rate = pieces per unit / hours required

Both inputs come from the routing step that runs at the machine, which is where piece-rate math lives rather than on the work center record. So a step that produces one piece per unit and needs 0.14 hours per piece has a rate of about 7.1 pieces per hour. With that rate in hand, the conversion is arithmetic: hours entered multiply by the rate to give pieces, and pieces entered divide by the rate to give hours.

Two design choices make this reliable.

The rate is snapshotted when a punch opens. When an operator starts a run, the rate in force at that moment is frozen onto the punch. If a planner edits the routing next week, the history of work already logged does not change. Your past reports stay accurate because they use the rate that applied when the work happened, not today's. This is the same discipline that keeps actuals immutable.

A missing cycle time yields a zero rate, honestly. If the routing has no hours required or no pieces per unit, the rate is zero rather than a fabricated number. The derived side then stays at zero, while whatever was genuinely measured is still recorded. EDGEBIC does not invent a rate it cannot compute.

Which Side You Log

Which measure a shop treats as the recorded truth on an operation is a convention it adopts, not a per-machine setting.

• Hours-led. The elapsed clock is the record. Pieces derive as hours times the rate. Right for time-metered work like a CNC mill.
• Pieces-led. The counted output is the record. Hours derive as pieces divided by the rate. Right for count-metered work like assembly or packaging.
• Both recorded. Each is entered independently, which lets you compare the two against the rate the operation was planned at.

The terminal captures both at every machine, so a single shop can mix them freely with nothing configured either way: mills read by hours, a packaging line read by counts, all rolling into the same daily actuals. The convention is expressed when the day is logged, through the Auto Calc Hours control in the daily grid, and the concept is covered in what is an actual entry mode. For the wider comparison of measuring capacity in hours versus pieces, see pieces-based vs hours-based capacity.

Good Pieces Only

When piece counts roll up into the daily actuals, one rule governs: only good pieces count. The day's actual pieces are the good pieces produced that day. Scrap is tracked separately, and every scrap piece carries a reason code so the cause is attributable and shows up in the scrap Pareto analysis. Rework pieces are counted on their own too.

This keeps two numbers honest. Your produced-quantity figure reflects sellable output, not gross output, so it means what a customer thinks it means. And your scrap figure is a clean, attributable count you can act on. To record counts at the kiosk, see how to record a piece count.

The Observed Rate

There is a second rate worth knowing about. The effective rate on the routing is the standard. But when the day's punches roll up, EDGEBIC also computes an observed rate for the day: the good pieces produced divided by the run hours worked. This is what actually happened, and it may differ from the standard.

That difference is information, not error. If a run logged fewer pieces per hour than the standard, something ate the time (a quality hold, a slow feed, a material issue). The gap between standard and observed rate points you at it. Over many jobs this becomes a real measure of how a work center performs against its routing.

A Worked Example

A CNC turning job: 50 pieces of a turbine shaft, one piece per unit, 0.14 hours per piece. Effective rate: about 7.1 pieces per hour. The shop logs this operation hours-led.

The shift runs Monday 08:00 to 16:00:

The day rolls up to:

Read it carefully. The actual pieces are 42, the good count only, with the single scrap excluded and logged under its quality reason. The observed rate of 5.6 pieces per hour sits below the 7.1 standard because the quality hold ate roughly an hour and a half. That gap is exactly the kind of signal the observed rate is meant to surface.

How This Reaches the Schedule

The daily actuals, whether logged as hours or as pieces, are what the scheduler reads on the next reschedule. Logged hours are locked on their real days; the produced quantity informs how much of the job is done. A step whose logged hours (or their piece equivalent) fully cover the planned work counts as complete even without a stamped end. This ties directly into how a reschedule uses last night's actuals, where the resume point and the remaining balance are computed from exactly this data.

The chain is clean: pieces off the machine become good piece counts, good counts become daily actual pieces (and, through the rate, hours), and those actuals steer the forward plan. A packaging line that counts cartons and a mill that times cuts both feed the same finite capacity scheduling engine, in the language each is naturally measured in.

The Takeaway

Piece counts are not a separate world from hours. They are the other side of one coin, joined by an effective rate that EDGEBIC computes from your routing and freezes at the moment work is logged. Log the side that fits each work center, count good pieces honestly, and the schedule gets a true picture of output regardless of how the floor prefers to measure it. That accuracy is what keeps WIP management and promise dates grounded in reality.

For the full punch-to-plan cycle, see the shop floor execution guide, and explore the platform at EDGEBIC.