How to Delete a Setup Family in EDGEBIC

To delete a setup family in EDGEBIC by User Solutions, first clear the family from every product assigned to it, then remove the family row in the setup matrix editor and save. The order matters. A family that still has products pointing at it cannot be removed, and that refusal is protecting you: those products would otherwise lose their changeover rule without anybody noticing.

Setup families are the reason a changeover matrix stays maintainable, so retiring one is a real housekeeping task rather than a cleanup afterthought. This page covers doing it without leaving the scheduler charging a flat setup time where it used to charge a real one.

Before You Start

• Know why the family is going. Merged into another family, no longer produced, or created by mistake. The answer decides where its products should land.
• Know which work center you are in. The setup matrix is per machine. Changeover physics belong to the equipment, so the paint booth's families say nothing about the welder.
• Have the replacement decided. If products are moving to a different family, know which one before you start clicking.
• Understand the fallback. With no family cell in play, the changeover time comes from the routing step's setup time, then the work center default.

If families themselves are new to you, how to create a setup family in EDGEBIC covers the other direction first.

Step 1: Open the Setup Matrix Editor

On the Workcenter tab, click the ⚙ button in the work center row's actions column, tooltip Sequence-dependent setup matrix (A1). You can also open the work center for editing and use the Setup Matrix tab, then Open Setup-Matrix Editor.

The Sequence-Dependent Setup Matrix dialog opens, headed with the work center's name. It has four tabs: Family Matrix, Product Overrides, Families, and Product Families.

Step 2: Find Out Who Still Uses the Family

Open the Product Families tab. It lists every product with a Setup family dropdown beside it.

Scan that column for the family you plan to remove. Every row showing it is a product that must move first. On a mature catalog this is usually a short list plus one or two forgotten parts.

Step 3: Reassign or Clear Those Products

For each product still on the family, set the dropdown to its new family, or leave it empty if the product should follow no family rule at all.

An empty dropdown is a legitimate answer, not a gap. A product with no family is treated as its own case: only a product-level override cell can describe its changeovers. That is fine for a one-off part with unusual behavior, and wrong for a part that behaves exactly like six others.

Click Save.

Step 4: Remove the Family

Open the Families tab. It lists each family with its Name and Code.

Select the row for the family you are retiring and remove it, then click Save.

Two things happen together. The family disappears from the setup family dropdowns, and every changeover cell that referenced it as a from side or a to side goes with it. A cell pointing at a family that no longer exists could never be evaluated, so leaving those cells behind would only be clutter.

Step 5: Repair the Matrix You Just Thinned

This is the step that separates a clean retirement from a schedule that quietly gets less accurate.

If products moved to a surviving family, that family now has to answer changeover questions it never answered before. Open the Family Matrix tab and check the pairs:

• Does the surviving family have a cell for every from-family it now meets on the floor?
• Does it have a cell in both directions where the two directions differ? Light to dark and dark to light are rarely the same number.

Add the missing cells and save. Enter the minutes the floor actually spends, and use the notes field to record why a number is what it is.

How to Check It Worked

1. The family is gone from the dropdown. Open the product families tab: the retired name should not appear as an option.
2. No product is unassigned by accident. Scan the setup family column for empty dropdowns you did not intend.
3. The matrix still covers the real pairs. On the family matrix tab, walk the from and to combinations you actually run and confirm each has a cell.
4. Run a schedule and read the setup hours. Changeovers through the affected products should show the minutes you entered on the surviving family, not a flat default.

Common Mistakes

Deleting the cells instead of the family. Removing every cell that mentions a family leaves the family itself in place, still assignable, still doing nothing. Clean up the family, not just its rows.

Leaving products with an empty family and calling it done. A family cell only fires when both the previous and the next product have a family assigned. Half-assigned products fall back silently to a flat setup time, which is why the schedule stops matching the floor without any error appearing.

Retiring a family without checking both directions. The surviving family often needs new cells, and the reverse direction is the one people forget.

Assuming the work centers share the change. They do not. Removing a family removes it from the catalog, but each work center has its own cells, so every machine that used the family needs its matrix checked.

Next Steps

Individual bad cells are a smaller job than a whole family: how to remove a setup matrix entry in EDGEBIC covers that. When the matrix is settled, export it for the record with how to export the setup matrix to CSV in EDGEBIC. More task guides are on the EDGEBIC how-to hub, and the EDGEBIC product page shows where sequence-dependent setup fits the scheduling model.