How to Change the Hours on a Routing Step in EDGEBIC

To change the hours on a routing step in EDGEBIC by User Solutions you type the new per-unit time into the step's Hours Required cell and save with Update Standard BOR. The one rule that matters is the unit: Hours Required is always the time one unit takes, and the scheduler multiplies it by the order quantity itself.

That multiplication is why an hours edit carries more weight than any other change in the routing, and why a wrong unit here is the fastest way to make a Gantt unreadable. For the mechanism behind the arithmetic, see how EDGEBIC reads a routing.

Before You Start

• Know whether the new figure is per unit or per batch. If it is per batch, divide by the batch size before it goes anywhere near the cell.
• Know whether the change is a permanent process improvement or a one-off for a single job. Permanent goes on the standard routing. One-off goes on that job's own copy.
• Have the routing open and saving cleanly, so any validation error afterward is definitely from this edit.

Changing the Hours

1. Open the BOR tab and select the product's routing. The grid loads in Data Grid mode.
2. Find the step's row and click into the Hours Required cell.
3. Type the new per-unit value. Three shortcuts save arithmetic:
   • Click the fx button beside the value (or double-click the value) to open the Pieces ↔ Hours Converter. Enter Pieces: and choose Per: Hour, Minute or Day, and it computes the decimal Hours per piece: for you.
   • Type an expression such as 1/4 or 30/60 straight into the cell.
   • Read the header while you type: Estimated Hour per unit = is a live sum, so an obviously wrong figure shows up before you save. It sits beside Setup Time and Total Cost on the same strip, read in how to check a routing's hours and cost totals.
4. If the change is really about one-time preparation rather than run time, put it in Setup Time (hrs) instead. See adding setup time to a routing step for why the two behave completely differently.
5. Click Update Standard BOR. Fix anything the Validation Errors dialog lists rather than saving around it.

The same field is editable in Designer mode: select the node and the Properties panel on the right shows Hours Required with the same fx converter. The grid is faster when you are editing several rows, and the Designer is better when you want to see which step you are touching.

For a rate that applies to a single job rather than the product as a whole, do not edit the standard routing at all. A rush job that gets extra hands, or a rework order that runs slower, is a per-job change, and pushing it into the standard would misstate every future order. Each scheduled job carries its own routing copy, and that copy is where a one-off rate belongs. Edit it on the Scheduled Job BOR tab, save it into the job's copy, and reschedule that job. The standard routing, and every other job, stays on the original number.

The reason the unit matters so much is the composition the scheduler uses. An operation's booked duration is setup plus hours required times the order quantity, so Hours Required is the only field on the step that scales with how much you are making. Setup is flat, queue is a buffer, and the lot-streaming fields govern overlap, but the run time is the term the quantity multiplies. That is what makes an hours edit ripple through the finish date while a setup edit barely moves a large order, and it is worth keeping in mind before you change the value.

What Changes When You Save

Worked through: the reference routing mills at 0.50 hours a unit with 1.0 hour of setup. A 100-unit order plans 1.0 plus 0.50 times 100, which is 51.0 hours. Correct the rate to 0.40 and the next 100-unit order plans 1.0 plus 0.40 times 100, which is 41.0 hours. A job scheduled last week at the old rate still shows 51.0 hours until you deliberately adopt the change on that job.

How to Check It Worked

Estimated Hour per unit = is the fastest check. On the reference routing it reads 1 with steps of 0.20, 0.50 and 0.30. Drop the mill to 0.40 and it should read 0.90. If it did not move, the value did not save.

Then schedule a test order and read the operation's bar on the Job View Gantt. The bar length should match setup plus rate times quantity, and a bar that is dramatically longer or shorter than you expect almost always means a unit error rather than a capacity problem.

If the number came from a time study, compare it against logged actuals for the same operation once a few jobs have run. That comparison is the whole point of recording actual hours in the first place.

Common Mistakes

Typing the batch total. A 500-part order at 4 minutes a part is 33.3 hours in total and 0.0667 hours a unit. Type 33.3 and the scheduler plans 16,650 hours. The Gantt makes this unmissable, but only after you have scheduled.

Working in minutes. The field is decimal hours. Four minutes is 0.0667, not 4. Typing 4/60 into the cell is the safest habit when your source data is in minutes.

Putting setup in the run time. A fixture change that happens once per run scales with quantity if it lives in Hours Required. On a 500-unit order, a 0.5 hour setup mistyped into the hours field becomes 250 hours.

Expecting the shop floor to see it. Live jobs keep their own routing copy so travelers and operator instructions stay valid. Adopting the change on a specific job is a deliberate decision, covered in editing a live job's routing safely.

Changing hours when the real issue is the machine. If the operation is slower because it landed on the wrong work center, the fix is routing, not rate. A second machine with its own hours is what alternate work centers are for.

Next Steps

The companion edit is adding setup time to a routing step, which is the other half of every operation's duration. If the step should be measured by piece count instead of hours, see how to set pieces required on a routing step. The full task library is at the EDGEBIC how-to hub, and the platform overview is at EDGEBIC.