How to Read the Top Jobs by Load Tab in EDGEBIC

The Top Jobs by Load tab in EDGEBIC by User Solutions ranks the heaviest jobs in the plant for a reporting window, so you can see at a glance whether one order is consuming the shop. Per-station views tell you which machines are full. This tells you who filled them.

For the report that holds this tab, see how to run the work center utilization report. Every task in this library is mapped on the EDGEBIC how-to hub.

Before You Start

• Jobs are scheduled. Load is derived from the plan, so an unscheduled shop produces an empty ranking.
• Work centers carry shifts and calendars, because the report computes available hours from the real calendars and any per-day overrides.
• You have a window in mind. The ranking is only meaningful against a period, and a quarter and a week will not produce the same list.

Step 1: Open the Report and Set the Window

Open Reports from the main navigation and click the 📊 Work Center Utilization tile in the Diagnostics group. The Select date range dialog appears first. Set From and To, then click OK.

Pick the window deliberately. A one-week window answers "who is filling the shop right now". A one-quarter window answers "who is our biggest consumer of capacity this quarter". Both are valid; mixing them up is how two people end up quoting different top jobs from the same report.

Step 2: Read the KPI Strip First

The strip across the top gives you the plant context: plant utilization percentage, scheduled, actual and available hours, and the counts of bottleneck, overloaded and underloaded work centers.

Read it before you read any tab. A plant at 62% utilization with two overloaded stations has a sequencing problem. A plant at 96% with nine overloaded stations has a capacity problem, and no ranking of jobs is going to fix it.

Step 3: Open Top Jobs by Load

Switch to the Top Jobs by Load tab. It ranks the heaviest jobs across the plant for the window, largest load first.

Read the ranking as three bands rather than as a list:

If a column puzzles you, click Column Details… in the report window. Every report explains its own columns, with the definition, the formula, the unit, and worked example values. See how to use Column Details.

Step 4: Ask the Three Questions a Heavy Job Raises

A heavy job is not automatically a problem. Three questions decide whether it is:

1. Is it heavy because it is large? Check the order quantity and the due date. A 500-piece order with four weeks to run is doing exactly what it should.
2. Is it heavy on the constraint? A heavy job that never touches the bottleneck costs you far less than a light job that sits on it. Read the bottleneck count on the KPI strip and the bottleneck label on the Per Work Center tab.
3. Is it heavy and late? Load and lateness are different measures. Cross-check the top names against the 🚨 Late Jobs report, which ranks worst-first by days late and carries a blocker hint. See how to run the late jobs report.

Only the third combination, heavy plus on the constraint plus late, justifies moving other people's work.

Step 5: Narrow From the Plant to the Station

Top Jobs by Load is a plant-wide ranking. To see which operations of a heavy job land on a specific machine, use two narrower views:

• On the Per Work Center tab, select the station's row to see its job backlog underneath.
• In Schedule then the Resource Calendar, click an assigned hours or backlog cell to open the Job Detail list for that exact period. See how to see which jobs are behind a capacity number.

You can also scope the report itself to a set of jobs when the question is about one customer or one program, which is covered in how to scope a utilization report to a list of jobs.

Step 6: Export the Evidence

Click Export to Excel…. The utilization report produces a multi-sheet workbook, and Top Jobs is one of its sheets alongside the KPIs, the per work center detail, the daily heatmap, plan versus actual, capacity waste, and a flat backlog detail. Export to PDF… prints the grid as you have laid it out.

Export before the meeting rather than after it. Reports query the database fresh each time you open them and nothing is cached, so the ranking you discussed on Monday is not the ranking you will see on Thursday.

What Changes When You Run It

Nothing. Every report is read-only and point-in-time. Your grid layout is the one thing that persists: column order, widths, grouping and sorting are saved per report for your login and restored next time you open it.

How to Check You Read It Right

Pick the top job and add up the picture from a second direction. Open the 🔩 Work Center Progress report filtered to that job and read its step hours. The steps should account for the load the ranking attributed to it. If they do not, either the window is clipping part of the job or you are comparing a scheduled figure against an actual one.

Common Mistakes

• Reading the ranking as a priority list. It ranks consumption of hours, not urgency. Priority lives on the job, and lateness lives in the Late Jobs report.
• Comparing two rankings from different windows. Change the window and the order changes. Always state the window when you quote a top job.
• Assuming a heavy job is on the machine you are worried about. The tab is plant-wide. Use the per-station backlog to confirm.
• Treating a light job's high rank as noise. It is usually a routing hours error, and those errors follow you into every quote.
• Quoting the approximate capacity view instead. For capacity numbers, this report is the authority, because its available hours come from the real shift calendars. See how to run the work center performance report for the lighter trend view and its limits.

See how load, capacity, and the plan stay in one system on the EDGEBIC product page.