How to Bind a Routing Step to a Machine Pool in EDGEBIC

To bind a routing step to a machine pool in EDGEBIC by User Solutions, open the step's work-center selection popup and choose the Work Center Group radio instead of a single machine. The control lives in the same selection popup you use to pick a work center on a step, which offers three choices: Workcenter, Product, and Work Center Group. Pick the group, confirm, and the step targets the pool rather than one machine. On every scheduling run the engine shops the pool and places the operation on the member it selects, so you never hand-maintain a machine list across dozens of routings.

This recipe covers one specific task: routing an existing step to a pool. To build the pool first, see how to create work center groups. For what a pool is and when to use one, read EDGEBIC work center groups explained and what is a work center group or machine pool.

Before You Start

• A work center group already exists with at least one active member. A group with no active members cannot be scheduled and will not appear in the step's picker.
• The routing open, with the step you want to pool identified. It must be a normal work-center step, not a material or parallel step.
• An understanding that binding to a group clears any manual alternate work centers already on the step.

Step by Step

1. Open the BOR tab and select the routing you want to edit.
2. On the step's row, click the select button next to the work-center field (the tooltip reads Select Work Center). The selection popup opens with three radios: Workcenter, Product, and Work Center Group.
3. Select the Work Center Group radio. The list switches to active groups that have at least one active member. Hover a group to preview its members and their factors.
4. Pick the group and click Confirm. The step now shows the group badge, for example the group name and member count, instead of a machine name.
5. Click Update Standard BOR to save the routing.
6. Run Generate Schedule so the engine shops the pool and places the operation on a member.

What Changes When You Save

Saving records the group binding on the step permanently. Until the step is scheduled, it displays the pool badge. On the next scheduling run, the engine translates the step's base hours into per-machine effective hours (base hours times each member's efficiency factor, plus that member's setup) and applies the group's selection strategy against the members' current load. It then books the operation on the chosen machine. After that, every surface (Gantt, Job View, grids, reports) shows the real machine, not the badge. The step still stores the group binding, so a later reschedule can re-shop the pool. Not-yet-started operations can legitimately move to a different member on a reschedule, while started or completed operations keep the machine that actually ran them.

How to Check It Worked

Before scheduling, confirm the step's row shows the group badge rather than a machine name. After running Generate Schedule, open the Job View and confirm the operation now sits on a specific member of the pool. If the step failed to schedule with a group warning, the group or all of its members are inactive: reactivate the group or at least one member, or rebind the step to a machine, then reschedule.

Common Mistakes

• Binding a material or parallel step. A group binding is only valid on a normal work-center step. Material rows and parallel steps are not eligible in this release.
• Expecting your manual alternates to survive. Binding to a group clears the step's hand-picked alternates, because the group is the alternate list. If you needed the bespoke list, unbind and use per-step alternates.
• Binding to a group with no active members. Such a group does not appear in the picker, and a step bound to a group that later loses all active members fails to schedule with a visible warning rather than silently landing on a wrong machine.
• Assuming the badge is permanent. The badge is a before-scheduling state. After a run, the step shows the resolved machine.

Related Reading

• How to add an alternate work center to a step for the per-step fallback a group replaces at scale.
• How to review which work center a group step resolved to to confirm the pick after scheduling.
• EDGEBIC and the EDGEBIC how-to hub for the full recipe set.

Binding a step to a pool turns a fixed machine assignment into a capacity-aware choice the engine makes fresh every run, which is what keeps interchangeable machines busy instead of letting jobs queue on one while its twins sit idle.