How to Read the Capacity Heatmap in EDGEBIC

The capacity heatmap in EDGEBIC by User Solutions colors every work center and every day by load, so an oversold station jumps out of the grid before anyone reads a number. It appears as a 14-day view on the dashboard's Planner tab and in more detail on the Work Center Utilization report's Daily Heatmap tab. Reading it well is a small skill with a large payoff: it turns a wall of numbers into a picture you can act on.

For the playbook once you spot a red cell, read reading a red day on the capacity view. For the dashboard the Planner version lives in, how to set up and use the dashboard tabs. Every task in this library is mapped on the EDGEBIC how-to hub.

Before You Start

• Jobs are scheduled. The heatmap paints assigned hours from the plan, so an unscheduled plant paints nothing.
• Work centers have shifts assigned. Capacity comes from those calendars, and the load percentage divides by it.
• Your computer clock is correct. The heatmap runs from today forward, so a wrong system date paints the wrong days.

Step 1: Find the Right Heatmap

There are two, and they serve different moments.

Start on the dashboard for the glance, move to the report when a cell needs explaining.

Step 2: Read a Single Cell

Every cell is one work center on one day. Its color comes from load percent, which is assigned hours divided by that day's capacity. On the report's Daily Heatmap tab the cell also carries the raw numbers: scheduled hours, the day's capacity, the utilization percent, and how many jobs are on the station that day.

The color is a fast signal, not the whole story. A red cell is oversold, above 100%, but whether that is a one-hour problem or a crisis is the number behind the color, and the number is right there on the report cell or under the hover on the dashboard.

Step 3: Tell a Holiday From an Idle Day

Two kinds of blank look similar and mean opposite things.

• An empty cell is a day with capacity and no work booked. That is idle capacity, a gap you could fill.
• A holiday cell is a day with no capacity at all, marked as a holiday with zero capacity hours. That is not idle time; there was never any time to use.

Confusing the two leads to trying to schedule work into a holiday, which the plan will refuse. Read the capacity figure, not just the color: zero capacity is a holiday, positive capacity with no load is a genuine gap.

Step 4: Hover for the Numbers

On the dashboard heatmap, hover any cell for its assigned-versus-total hours and its load percent. This is the quickest way to size a problem before deciding whether it is worth a drill-down. A cell at 103% is worth a note; a cell at 140% is worth acting on today, and the hover is how you tell them apart without leaving the screen.

Step 5: Drill Into the Jobs

Color and percent tell you a station is overloaded. They do not tell you what to move. For that, open the Resource Calendar under Schedule and click that station's Hours Assigned cell for the period. A job detail popup lists every allocation behind the number with job, product, shift, date, instance and transaction hours, and the rows sum back to the cell.

The Work Center Utilization report gives the same answer through its per-work-center backlog drill-down if you are already in the report. Method for the whole report is in how to run the work center utilization report.

What Changes When You Read It

Nothing. Both heatmaps are read-only views of the plan.

Acting on a red cell is what changes things, and none of those actions happen from the heatmap itself: a per-day capacity override, a job moved on the Gantt, or a scheduler run. Completed work is never moved by any of them, so a fix lands on remaining work only.

How to Check You Read It Right

The clearest confirmation comes after you act. Fix an overload (add capacity for the day, or move the least urgent job off the station), re-run the schedule, and re-open the heatmap. The red cell should turn a cooler color or the number should fall below 100%. If the same station is red every week no matter what you move, you are reading a real constraint rather than a scheduling wrinkle, and that is a capacity conversation rather than a heatmap one.

Common Mistakes

• Reading color without the number. Red means oversold, but the size of the overload decides whether it is a note or an emergency.
• Treating a holiday cell as an idle day. Zero capacity is not spare time. Check the capacity figure, not the color.
• Reconciling the heatmap with the monthly rating. The heatmap is per day and the utilization report averages a range. Both are right; use each for its own question.
• Ignoring a wrong system clock. The grid runs from today. A wrong date paints the wrong days, and every cell reads for the wrong day.

See how the plan behind every cell is built on the EDGEBIC product page.