How to Set a Pool Selection Strategy in EDGEBIC

To set a pool selection strategy in EDGEBIC by User Solutions, open the work center group and set its selection strategy to Earliest Completion, Primary First, or Earliest Start. The control lives on the group record in the Work Center Groups manager. The strategy tells the resolver how to choose a member each time it schedules a step bound to that pool. Earliest Completion, the default, minimizes each job's lead time by picking the member that finishes the operation soonest given current load. The other two trade that for predictable routing or for getting work moving on the earliest possible day.

This recipe covers one specific task. For what pools are and how the resolver explodes a group into member candidates, read EDGEBIC work center groups explained.

Before You Start

• An existing work center group open in the Work Center Groups manager, with its members already added. To add members first, see how to add a machine to a pool.
• A clear priority for this pool: shortest cycle time, predictable routing, or earliest start.
• If you plan to use Primary First, one member designated as the primary.

Step by Step

1. Open the WorkCenter tab and go to Work Center Groups.
2. Open the group whose behavior you want to set.
3. Set the Selection Strategy:
   • Earliest Completion to pick the member that finishes the operation soonest.
   • Primary First to always try the designated primary and spill to others only when it is full.
   • Earliest Start to pick the member that can begin on the earliest day.
4. If you chose Primary First, mark exactly one member as the primary. EDGEBIC demotes any previous primary automatically.
5. Save.
6. Run Generate Schedule or a reschedule.

What Changes When You Save

On the next run, EDGEBIC explodes each pool-bound step into its members and applies the strategy you chose. Earliest Completion projects a finish time for each member, weighing its speed and its current queue, and takes the soonest. Primary First takes the designated primary whenever it has capacity on the target date, and only spills to other members when the primary is full. Earliest Start is day-granular: it favors the member that can start on the earliest day, so a member free today beats a faster member that can only start tomorrow, and among same-day starters the earlier finisher wins.

The strategy applies per pool, so different pools can behave differently in the same schedule. A manual member pin on an individual step still overrides the strategy for that step.

How to Check It Worked

Run the schedule, then read the session log for the group's explosion and decision lines. The explosion line lists the candidates and their effective hours; the decision line shows which member the resolver chose. Confirm the choice matches the strategy: with Primary First, the primary should win whenever it had capacity; with Earliest Start, the member that could start on the earliest day should win even if a faster member exists. On the Gantt, spot-check a pool-bound operation to see it landed on the expected machine.

Common Mistakes

• Expecting Earliest Start to mean fastest. Earliest Start is about the earliest start day, not the soonest finish. For shortest cycle time, use Earliest Completion.
• Selecting Primary First with no designated primary. Without a primary, Primary First has nothing to prefer and falls back to the deterministic order. Designate one primary member first.
• Trying to designate two primaries. A group allows at most one primary. Promoting a new one demotes the old one automatically, so plan around a single preferred machine.
• Using the strategy for a one-off decision. To keep one job on a specific member, pin the member on that step instead. The pin beats the strategy and survives reschedules, without changing the pool's default for every other job.

Where to Go Next

A pool's members and its strategy are the two levers that shape its behavior. If you still need to add or remove members, read how to add a machine to a pool. For the concept behind machine pools, see what is a work center group or machine pool. The full platform is at EDGEBIC, with more recipes in the EDGEBIC How-To Library.