How to Add a Step to an Existing Routing in EDGEBIC

To add a step to an existing routing in EDGEBIC by User Solutions you insert a grid row, pick the work center, type the per-unit hours, and then relink the chain on both sides of the new step. The relink is the part planners skip, and it is the part that decides whether the scheduler sees the new operation at all.

This is the narrow task: one operation, into a routing that already works. For building a routing from nothing, start with how to create a routing step by step, and for what each field means before you type in it, read the bill of routing explained.

Before You Start

Three things need to be true, and each one prevents a specific failure:

• The routing already exists and saves cleanly today. Fix any existing validation errors first, so a new error is unambiguously yours.
• The work center the step runs on exists, and it has shifts assigned. A machine with no shift has no capacity windows, so a step routed to it has nowhere to land.
• You know which existing step the new one sits between. The insert point drives the relink, and it is worth deciding before you touch the grid.

Adding the Step

1. Open the BOR tab and select the product's routing in the selector at the top. The grid loads in Data Grid mode.
2. Insert the row. Add Step on the toolbar appends a row at the bottom. Right-clicking an existing row gives you Add Step Above and Add Step Below, which is faster when you already know where the operation belongs.
3. In the new row, click the 📝 button in the WC/Product Id column. The item selection popup opens.
4. Leave the Workcenter radio selected, highlight the machine, and click Confirm. The WC/Product Name column fills in with that work center's unique number.
5. Type a Sequence number that reads correctly between its neighbors. Between 20 and 30, use 25.
6. Enter Hours Required as the time one unit takes on that machine. If you know the rate as pieces per hour, click the fx button beside the value to open the Pieces ↔ Hours Converter, or type an expression such as 4/60 straight into the cell.
7. Enter Setup Time (hrs) for one-time preparation, and Queue Time (hrs) if parts genuinely wait after the step (cooling, inspection buffer). Both are optional and both default to zero.
8. Relink the chain, which is two edits, not one:
   • On the upstream step, open the 📝 button in the Next In Sequence column, tick the new step in the Select Next in Sequence (Multi-Select) popup, and click Confirm.
   • On the new step, open the same picker and point it at whatever comes next. If the new step is now last, click End Item instead, which links it to the finished product and closes the chain.
9. Click Update Standard BOR. If a Validation Errors dialog appears, read the list and fix the rows rather than answering yes to "Do you want to save anyway?".

The same insert works visually in Designer mode. Drag the machine from the Work Centers group in the Toolbox onto the canvas, turn on the Draw Connector toggle, and draw an arrow from the upstream node into the new node and another from the new node onward. Fill the node's numbers in the Properties panel on the right, then click Update. The grid and the Designer are two views of one routing, so a step inserted in either shows up in the other. Use the grid when you know exactly where the step goes, and the Designer when you want to see the flow rearrange as you connect it.

What Changes When You Save

Saving writes the product's standard recipe. It does not move anything that is already planned.

Take the reference three-step routing: sawing at 0.20 hours a unit, milling at 0.50, assembly at 0.30, so Estimated Hour per unit = reads 1. Insert a deburr step at 0.10 hours a unit and the header moves to 1.10 straight away. On a 100-unit order, that is 10 extra hours of machine time plus whatever setup you entered, and it lands on the deburr work center's capacity, not on the mill's.

How to Check It Worked

Read the header totals first: Estimated Hour per unit = should have moved by exactly the hours you typed, and Setup Time = by exactly the setup. If either did not move, the value did not save.

Then check the chain. No row should carry the ⚠ marker in the WC/Product Name column, which is what the grid shows when a step's next-in-sequence link is empty or points at a step that no longer exists. Switch to Designer mode for the visual version: your new node should sit in the flow with one arrow in and one arrow out, and every path should still arrive at the end product node.

Finally, schedule a test order and look at the Job View Gantt. The new operation should appear as its own bar, after its predecessor, on the work center you chose. Nothing appearing means the scheduler never reached the step.

Common Mistakes

Renumbering instead of relinking. Changing Sequence moves the row in the grid and does nothing else. Execution order comes from the Next In Sequence links, and a step nobody points at is simply skipped. This is the single most common routing edit error, covered further in 8 routing mistakes that distort your schedule.

Typing batch hours in the per-unit field. The scheduler multiplies Hours Required by the order quantity. A batch total inflates that operation by the batch size, and on a 500-unit order the result is unmistakable on the Gantt.

Putting one-time work in the hours field. Fixture changes and program loads belong in Setup Time (hrs), which is added once per run. Left in Hours Required, they scale with quantity.

Adding a step to a live job by editing the standard. The standard routing does not reach jobs that are already scheduled. That is deliberate, and the per-job path is a different tab: see editing a live job's routing safely.

Next Steps

If the new step landed in the wrong place, reordering routing steps is the follow-up task, and it is more about links than numbers. For the full task library, see the EDGEBIC how-to hub, and for where routings sit in the wider platform, EDGEBIC.