How to Run the Production Scheduler in EDGEBIC, Step by Step

To run the production scheduler in EDGEBIC, open Drive Schedule, tick the jobs you want planned, press Schedule + Re-Schedule, and confirm the job counts in the dialog that appears. The run places every operation of every selected job into real shift hours on real work centers, never exceeding what a machine can actually do, and comes back with dates you can hand to the floor. EDGEBIC by User Solutions handles the rest of the decision-making, but the four columns you read afterwards decide whether you act or move on.

This is the procedure post. For which jobs a run touches and why, read EDGEBIC scheduling modes explained first; for the machinery underneath, the scheduling engine guide goes deep.

Before You Run: Four Prerequisites

That last row is the one that catches experienced planners. Master data edits do not ripple into an existing plan by themselves. Change first, then run.

The Run, Step by Step

1. Tick the Select checkbox on the jobs you want planned. Tick nothing and you will be offered all of them.
2. Press Schedule + Re-Schedule.
3. If nothing was ticked, the Schedule All Orders prompt asks whether to include everything. Answer no if you meant to pick specific rows.
4. Read the Confirm Scheduling dialog. It states the split: how many jobs are new (first-time scheduling) and how many are existing jobs that will be rescheduled. This is your last cheap check on scope.
5. Watch the progress overlay. It shows a progress bar, the current operation, elapsed time, and a Cancel button. The grid is locked while the pass runs.
6. On completion the status reads that scheduling completed successfully, the overlay closes, and every planned job shows a Scheduled badge with dates filled in.

Cancel is always safe. Nothing partial is kept, and your previous plan stands.

Rescheduling a Single Job

Most days you do not need a plant-wide pass. To replan one job:

1. Open the Job View tab and select the job.
2. Press Re-Schedule on the Gantt control bar.
3. Confirm the prompt, which warns that the job's schedule will be cleared and regenerated.

Only that job moves. Completed and in-progress operations on it stay exactly where they are, and every other job's plan is untouched. This is the right tool for a moved due date, a routing edit on one order, or a machine problem that only affects one path.

Reading the Result

The Drive Schedule grid is the master view of every job. Six columns carry the answer:

Two more columns earn their place. Schedule Details carries a one-line summary starting with the planned start. Hours (plan / actual) puts planned hours next to recorded hours so variance is visible without opening anything.

Job View shows the same job one row per operation: scheduled start and end, duration, scheduled hours, actual start and end, remaining hours, percent complete, and the same Item Start, Lead Time and Job End trio at job level. The Gantt beside it draws the same plan as bars.

Days Late turning red before the due date has passed is a feature. It means the current plan already cannot make the promise, and you get the warning while acting is still cheap.

Is the Run Destructive? The Safety Nets

There is no preview step on Drive Schedule itself: the run writes the plan when it completes. Three things keep that safe.

The confirm dialog tells you exactly how many jobs will be created versus rescheduled before anything happens. Recorded work is never touched, so a run can never rewrite history on the floor. And Cancel keeps nothing partial, so an interrupted run leaves the previous plan standing.

If you want a propose-first workflow, that is what the optimizer is for: it computes alternatives and changes nothing until you accept them. The EDGEBIC optimizer guide covers that path, including why a proposal is sometimes identical to the plan you already have.

How the Engine Decides Order

Understanding three levels of sequencing explains most results:

1. Between jobs. The queue is sorted by priority (lower number first), then start date, then due date. Each job is planned completely before the next begins, and each claims capacity as it goes. On a loaded plant, the queue order is the plan.
2. Within a job. The routing rules. A step cannot start before every step it depends on has finished, plus any queue time, transit days, or overlap configured on the routing.
3. Within a step. The engine searches day by day and shift by shift for the earliest slot with free capacity on that work center, splitting across shifts and days as needed, and spreading across machine instances where the work center has more than one.

A Worked Run

Take the week of Monday July 20. One day shift, 08:00 to 16:00, eight hours. One machine each on the saw and the mill. No other load.

Press Schedule + Re-Schedule and the engine plans priority 1 first:

• Job 0102: saw Monday 08:00 to 10:00, then mill Monday 10:00 to 16:00 (6 hours) and Tuesday 08:00 to 10:00 (the remaining 2). Item Start Tuesday 10:00, Job End Wednesday Jul 22 with the one day lead time, due Wednesday Jul 22, Days Late 0.
• Job 0124: saw Monday 10:00 to 16:00, right after the bracket's cut. Mill Tuesday 10:00 to 12:00, because the mill is busy with the bracket until 10:00. Item Start Tuesday 12:00, Job End Thursday Jul 23, due Friday Jul 24, Days Late 0.

Both jobs are on time and the mill runs without an idle gap from Monday 10:00 to Tuesday 12:00.

Now swap the priorities and run again. The plate would hold the saw until 14:00, the bracket's cut would finish only at 16:00 Monday, and its eight mill hours would consume all of Tuesday. Item Start moves from Tuesday 10:00 to Tuesday 16:00, and the bracket's promise survives with no margin at all. Same orders, same capacity, different queue. That is why priorities belong before the run.

When a Job Lands Later Than You Expected

Work this checklist in order. It resolves the overwhelming majority of "the date looks wrong" questions:

1. Someone else got the capacity first. Higher-priority jobs and jobs you did not select keep their reservations, and your job fits around them.
2. The calendar has no hours there. Weekends, plant or shift or work center holidays, downtime, or a shift simply not assigned to that work center.
3. The work center offers less than you think. Utilization below 100 percent, fewer machine instances than assumed, a per-day capacity override, or a one-job-per-day rule. Eighty percent utilization turns an eight hour shift into 6.4 plannable hours.
4. The routing adds waiting time on purpose. Queue time after a step, transit days between operations, or a predecessor that itself ended late.
5. The job resumed from reality, not from its old plan. Once actuals exist, remaining steps schedule forward from where the floor actually is.

Check the job's own start time too. A start time of 09:30 forbids the whole 08:00 to 09:30 window on day one.

For the deeper failure modes, see scheduling run mistakes and, when steps appear in the wrong order, steps scheduled out of sequence. If your plant has one machine that sets the pace, anchor scheduling around a bottleneck shows the Theory of Constraints variant of this same run.

After the Run

The Gantt, Job View, dashboards and reports all refresh to the new plan. Failed jobs are listed with a reason. Nothing else on the floor changes until you publish the plan, which is exactly the moment to check the Days Late column one more time.

Bring an order export and a work center list to a demo and we will run this workflow against your data in the same session. Contact US to book it, or read the EDGEBIC product overview first.