How to Deactivate a Shift in EDGEBIC

To deactivate a shift in EDGEBIC by User Solutions, open the Shifts screen, select the shift, click Edit, uncheck Is Active, and click Update. The definition is preserved and can be reinstated later. What changes immediately is that the shift stops appearing in work center assignment lists, and the hours it was contributing stop counting toward capacity.

That second part is the reason this task deserves a procedure rather than a click. A retired shift takes its hours with it, and a work center that still lists it will look correct while quietly scheduling less work than it used to.

Before You Start

• Be sure retirement is what you want. If the shift should keep running but close on specific dates, use a holiday instead: see how to close one shift for a holiday.
• Know which work centers use the shift. Open a few work center records and check their assigned shift lists before you make the change, so you have a list to clean up afterward.
• Watch out for synchronized work centers. Machines that must run together need at least one shift in common, so retiring a shift that provided that overlap will stop them being scheduled simultaneously.

Deactivating the Shift

1. Navigate to the Shifts screen.
2. Select the shift you want to retire.
3. Click Edit.
4. Uncheck Is Active.
5. Click Update.

The shift disappears from the active shift list straight away, which means it is no longer offered when you assign shifts to a work center.

Cleaning Up the Work Centers

Deactivating does not remove the shift from work centers that were already using it. The assignment record stays behind. Clean it up:

1. Open Work Centers and select a work center that used the retired shift.
2. Click Edit and go to the Associated Shifts tab.
3. Remove the retired shift from the assigned list.
4. Confirm at least one active shift remains assigned, or that the work center is set to use the plant-wide shifts.
5. Click Update, and repeat for each affected work center.

Step 4 is the one people skip. A work center that has opted out of the plant-wide shifts and now has an empty assigned list has no capacity at all, and it will simply never be scheduled.

What Changes

How to Check It Worked

Open any work center's shift assignment tab. The retired shift should no longer be offered in the available list. That confirms the flag saved.

Then check the capacity side, which is the part that actually matters. Pick a date the retired shift used to cover and look at a work center's available hours for that date: see how to check a machine's available hours on a date. The hours should have dropped by the retired shift's contribution, and if they have not, the work center is probably still carrying the old assignment.

Finally, run a scheduling pass and look at what moved. Retiring a shift usually pushes some work later, and seeing which jobs moved tells you which work centers were relying on those hours.

If the Shift Should Come Back

Deactivation is reversible, which is the reason to prefer it over deleting a shift you might want again. Open the shift, click Edit, check Is Active, and click Update. The definition and its daily hours are exactly as you left them.

Reinstating the shift does not reinstate the assignments, though. If you removed it from the work centers during cleanup, you have to add it back to each one before any capacity returns. That is a fair trade: the cleanup is what keeps the configuration honest while the shift is retired, and re-assigning is a deliberate act rather than a surprise.

A Quick Worked Example

A plant added a Saturday shift for a six-week backlog push. The backlog cleared, so the shift should stop.

The planner opens Shifts, selects the Saturday shift, clicks Edit, unchecks Is Active, and clicks Update. Three work centers had that shift assigned, so she opens each one, removes the retired shift from the assigned list, confirms the weekday shift is still there, and clicks Update.

She then checks the welding cell's available hours for the next two Saturdays and sees zero, which is correct. A full reschedule moves four jobs later in the following week. Two of them were only meeting their dates because of the weekend hours, which is worth knowing before those dates are repeated to a customer rather than after.

Common Mistakes

Deactivating instead of using a holiday. A shutdown week is a holiday, not a retirement. Deactivating removes the shift from every future date, not just the ones you had in mind.

Leaving the assignments behind. The shift stays listed on the work centers that used it. Remove it so the configuration reflects what the plant actually runs.

Leaving a work center with no active shift. A work center that has opted out of the plant-wide shifts and has an empty assigned list has zero capacity and will never be scheduled. Always confirm what is left.

Breaking the overlap for synchronized machines. Work centers that must run together need a shared shift. If the retired shift was that shared window, they can no longer be scheduled at the same time.

Forgetting to reschedule. Work already on the board does not move by itself. Run a scheduling pass so the plan reflects the reduced capacity: see how to reschedule everything from scratch.

Next Steps

To build a replacement pattern, see how to add a second shift and how to set daily working hours and breaks. For a machine that needs different hours from the rest of the plant, see how to give one work center its own calendar.

For the concepts behind all of this, see EDGEBIC shifts and calendars explained and how to set up shifts, holidays, and downtime. For the full task library, see the EDGEBIC how-to hub, and for the platform overview, EDGEBIC.