How to Block a Machine for a Maintenance Day in EDGEBIC

To block one machine for a maintenance day in EDGEBIC, set a per-day capacity override of zero on that work center for the date. Click the 📊 button on its row, pick the shift, find the day, and type 0 in the Capacity (h) column with a reason. The rest of the plant keeps running, and the machine comes back the moment you click Reset.

The instinct is to reach for a holiday. Resist it: a plant holiday closes every work center on every shift, which is a very expensive way to service one mill. This page covers the single-machine case. For the whole capacity resolution chain behind it, read how EDGEBIC resolves capacity day by day from EDGEBIC by User Solutions.

Before You Start

• You know the exact dates the machine is unavailable, and whether it is out for the whole day or part of it.
• You know which shifts the work center runs. Overrides are shift-specific, so a two-shift machine needs the entry twice per day.
• You know whether an alternate exists. Jobs re-route to configured alternates; without one, they slide.
• You can rerun the schedule. Nothing moves until Drive Schedule runs.

Step 1: Open the Per-Day Capacity Dialog

Open the Workcenter tab. On the work center's row in the Work Center Management grid, click 📊 (tooltip Per-day capacity). The Per-Day Capacity dialog opens.

The alternate route: in Schedule → Resource Calendar, double-click a date cell on the Total Capacity row for that work center.

Step 2: Select the Shift and the Date Range

Pick the shift in Shift:. This is the field that decides whether the block actually lands, because an override applies to one shift only.

Adjust the From: and To: date range so the maintenance dates are visible in the grid. The ↺ button resets the range to today minus seven days through today plus seven.

Step 3: Read the Day Before You Change It

The dialog shows a stacked bar per day with Loaded (blue), Free (green), and Over capacity (red), plus a summary card giving Total Days, Total capacity, Overridden days, Loaded, Free, and Over capacity.

Look at the Loaded (h) column for the maintenance day before you zero it. That number is the work you are about to displace, and it tells you how much pressure lands on the days either side.

Step 4: Type Zero in the Capacity Column

Find the maintenance day's row and type 0 in the Capacity (h) column. The change saves as you edit, and the Overridden column ticks.

Enter a Reason. This is the field that pays for itself three months later when someone asks why the plan had a hole in it: Annual bearing replacement, Furnace reline day 2 of 5, Certification day, machine unavailable.

Repeat for every affected date. If the work center runs two shifts, change Shift: and repeat the whole set, or the second crew will be scheduled onto a machine that is in pieces.

Step 5: Partial Days Get a Number, Not a Zero

If the machine is down for only part of the day, enter the hours it can actually work rather than zero. A 4-hour preventive maintenance window on an 8-hour shift becomes Capacity (h) = 4.

One rule governs the number: enter the total hours for the day across every instance, not per machine. On a three-instance work center where each machine loses 4 hours of an 8-hour shift, the entry is 12, not 4. The scheduler uses the value verbatim and does not multiply it by the instance count.

Step 6: Close and Rerun

Click Close, then run Drive Schedule.

What Changes When You Save

How to Check It Worked

1. Confirm the Overridden tick on the maintenance day's row, and that Overridden days in the summary card matches the number of days you entered.
2. Change Shift: and confirm the override exists on every shift the machine runs.
3. Open the Resource Calendar and read the work center's total capacity on that date. It should be zero (or your reduced number).
4. Run Drive Schedule, then check the Gantt: no bars for that work center on the blocked dates. Work should have moved to alternates if configured, or slid to the next available day.

Step 7: Give the Machine Back

When maintenance is done, open the dialog again and click Reset on each blocked row ("Remove the override and revert to the shift default"). The day returns to its formula-computed capacity at the next scheduling run.

Overrides persist until reset. A zero left in place after the machine returns is a self-inflicted bottleneck that nobody will find quickly.

Common Mistakes

Entering the override on one shift when the machine runs two. The most common failure, and the most invisible: days look blocked on the dashboard you happen to be looking at, and night work is scheduled anyway.

Using a plant holiday instead. It closes the entire plant. Every other machine loses the day too, and the finish date on every open job moves.

Entering per-machine hours on a multi-instance work center. Capacity (h) is the day total for all instances. Three machines at 4 hours each is 12, not 4. This one appears in our work center configuration mistakes list because the resulting plan looks plausible and is wrong by a factor of three.

Never resetting. The override outlives the maintenance unless you remove it.

Next

A per-day override of zero is the correct way to take one resource out of the plan for a day, and the reason field makes the plan explain itself later. The same dialog handles the opposite case, adding hours for approved overtime: how to override capacity for one day. More single-task recipes are in the EDGEBIC how-to hub, and the platform overview is at /edgebic.