How to Give One Work Center Its Own Calendar in EDGEBIC

To give one work center its own calendar in EDGEBIC, open its Work Center Configuration dialog, select the Associated Shifts tab, and untick Use Global Shifts. The shift-management buttons become active, you build a shift list that belongs to that machine alone, and the grid marks it with an amber Custom badge so every planner can see the exception exists.

Most work centers should never need this. The default (Use Global Shifts ticked) means one plant calendar governs everything, and one edit reaches every machine. The custom calendar exists for the genuine exception. This page is the mechanics of that exception, plus the maintenance cost it carries. For the plant-wide calendar model behind it, read shifts and calendars explained from EDGEBIC by User Solutions.

Before You Start

• The work center already exists (how to add a work center).
• The shift you want already exists, or you are ready to build one on the spot.
• You have a real reason. Three qualify: a machine staffed on a different shift from the rest of the plant, a cell that works a shorter week (Monday to Thursday only), or a shared or external resource available to you on fixed days.
• You accept the maintenance. Every custom calendar is one more place to update when the plant pattern changes.

Step 1: Open the Work Center for Editing

Open the Workcenter tab. On the Work Center Management grid, click ✏️ Edit on the target work center's row. The Work Center Configuration dialog opens.

Step 2: Select the Associated Shifts Tab

Select the Associated Shifts tab (section Shift Management). With Use Global Shifts ticked, the shift cards and buttons on this tab are disabled: the global calendar rules and there is nothing to edit here.

Step 3: Untick Use Global Shifts

Untick Use Global Shifts. The shift-management buttons become active.

At this moment the work center is on a custom calendar with an empty (or inherited-copy) shift list. Do not save and walk away here. A work center with a custom calendar and no shifts on it has zero working hours and will never receive a job.

Step 4: Build the Machine's Shift List

You have three controls:

On each shift card you can rename it in Shift Name, toggle individual weekdays, and set Start: and End: per day. 🔄 Reset All Days clears the card if you want to build it from scratch.

A worked case: a mill that runs nights only gets one card, Shift Name Night Shift, Monday to Friday ticked, Start: 16:00, End: 00:00. Each row shows the computed duration as you type, so 8h per weekday confirms the entry before you save. The wrap-around arithmetic is handled for you, and setting up an overnight shift covers which calendar day those hours are attributed to.

Step 5: Save

Click Save. The Shift Calendar column on the grid flips from 🌐 Global (green) to 📅 Custom (amber) for this work center.

What Changes When You Save

Nothing moves until you rerun. If a job currently sits at 09:00 on a machine you just moved to nights, that bar stays at 09:00 until the next scheduling run rebuilds it.

How to Check It Worked

1. Confirm the amber Custom badge on the work center's row in the Shift Calendar column.
2. Open the Resource Calendar and read that work center's capacity for a normal working day. A one-instance machine on a single 8-hour custom shift should read 8 hours, not 0 and not 16.
3. Run Drive Schedule and check the Gantt. Bars for this work center should now sit inside the new window and nowhere else. A night-shift mill's bars should appear in the evening block.
4. Confirm nothing else moved. Only jobs routed through this machine should have different dates.

Common Mistakes

Unticking Use Global Shifts and leaving the list empty. This is the fastest way to make a machine disappear from the plan. Zero shifts means zero capacity, and the symptom (a work center that never gets any work) looks nothing like the cause.

Forgetting the custom calendars during a plant-wide hours change. Global shift edits stop at the Custom badge, by design. After any change to the plant pattern, work through every Custom work center separately. This is a recurring entry in our shift and calendar mistakes list.

Using a custom calendar for a one-off day. Approved Saturday overtime for a single week is not a calendar change. It is a per-day capacity override, which carries a reason and an audit trail and expires when you reset it. See how to add a Saturday shift for one week.

Breaking a dependent-parallel group. Work centers that must run in synchronization need at least one shift in common. Giving one of them a custom calendar that does not overlap the others prevents the group from ever finding a simultaneous slot.

Next

A custom calendar is a deliberate exception with a visible badge and a real maintenance cost. Use it for the machine that genuinely lives on a different clock, and use per-day overrides for everything temporary. When the exception ends, how to return a work center to the global shift calendar covers re-ticking Use Global Shifts and what happens to the custom shifts. More single-task recipes are in the EDGEBIC how-to hub, and the platform overview is at /edgebic.