How to Set Up Operators, Skills, and Rosters in EDGEBIC

Setting up the labor constraint in EDGEBIC by User Solutions is five configuration passes: build the skills catalog, add operators, certify them, roster them onto shifts, and record known time off. A sixth step turns it on: setting the required skill and the operator attention on the routing steps that genuinely need a qualified person. Nothing changes on the schedule until you run it, and steps with no required skill are untouched throughout.

If you have not decided whether you need any of this yet, operator and skill scheduling explained covers what the constraint is and when it earns its place inside EDGEBIC.

Before You Start

That middle row is the one that catches shops out later, so it is worth confirming before you begin rather than debugging afterward.

Step 1: Build the Skills Catalog

Open the Daily Hours tab from the main navigation and select the Operators inner tab. In the Skills Catalog panel, type a Code (for example TIG) and a Skill name (for example TIG-Weld), then click Add. The skill appears in the catalog grid, where you can rename it and click Apply, or delete it.

Two rules keep this catalog useful:

• Model skills at the level you certify, not the level you organize. TIG-Weld is a skill. Welder is a job title. Steps gate on certifications, so keep skills as specific as the tickets your quality system issues.
• One step requires exactly one skill. If an operation genuinely needs two certifications at once, create the combination as its own skill, such as TIG-Weld+Inspection, and certify the people who hold both.

Step 2: Add Operators

Still on the Operators inner tab, click Operator to open the Add Operator dialog.

Save, and the operator appears in the list. Repeat for everyone whose availability actually gates work. You do not need to enter the whole plant on day one, only the people who hold the certifications you plan to schedule against.

Step 3: Certify Each Operator

Select the operator, open the Skills sub-tab, and click Add / Remove Skills. The Certify Operator dialog opens with a checklist of every skill. Check the ones this person holds and click OK. Each check produces a certification row, certified as of today, which you then refine in the grid and Apply:

One warning that saves real data: unchecking a skill in the Certify Operator dialog deletes that certification, taking its dates and level with it. To suspend a certification temporarily, untick Active on the grid row instead.

Record real expiry dates on certifications that really expire. An expired certification simply stops counting on the next run, which is a far better way to find out than an audit finding.

Step 4: Build the Weekly Roster

The roster answers who is at work, on which shift, on which weekday. It is a weekly pattern, exactly like a shift's weekly hours, and absences are recorded separately.

1. Select the operator and open the Roster sub-tab.
2. At the bottom, pick a shift in the Add shift selector and click Add Row.
3. On the new row, tick the weekday columns the operator works that shift. Each tick saves immediately.
4. Add further rows for other shifts if the person rotates, and use Remove to drop a shift row entirely.

Roster rows attach to global shifts. A work center whose custom calendar is derived from Day Shift automatically inherits the Day Shift roster, so rostering Joe once covers every work center that mirrors that shift. A work center shift that is not derived from any global shift can never be staffed, and skill-gated steps routed there will visibly fail to schedule. That is intentional: a silent pass there would put you back in the one-person-two-machines world the feature exists to prevent.

Step 5: Record Time Off

Select the operator, open the Time Off sub-tab, set From and To in the entry row, optionally type a reason, and click Add. Both dates are inclusive, so the operator is back the day after the To date.

Recording time off changes nothing until the next scheduling run. EDGEBIC does not replan by itself, which means a vacation entered but never rescheduled protects nothing. Enter leave as soon as it is approved and run the schedule.

Step 6: Gate the Routing Step

Now the constraint gets switched on, one step at a time. Open the BOR tab and select the step, or use the routing designer's properties panel, which carries the same fields.

The attention field and the operator picker are enabled only once a skill is set, and the operator list shows only people qualified for the skill you chose.

Set attention deliberately. The default is 0.0, which means setup only: a person sets the machine up and the machine then runs itself. That is correct for genuinely lights-out machining and wrong for hands-on work. Set 1.0 when someone must stand at the machine for the whole run, 0.5 when one person tends two machines, and above 1.0 for a crew. The full table with a worked example is in the attend fraction.

Use the pin sparingly. Automatic load-balances across everyone qualified and gives the scheduler room to keep dates. A pin trades that flexibility for certainty about who, and a pinned step slides through the pinned person's absence rather than falling back to a colleague.

Step 7: Run the Schedule and Read the Crew Plan

Nothing has moved yet. Run Drive Schedule, then check the plan:

After the run, the Dispatch tab is the printable answer to who does what and when, grouped by operator and date with hours per group. The Resource Calendar operator lens shows availability against booked hours per person and per skill pool. The Gantt marks skill-required bars with a person glyph and adds a crew line to the tooltip.

Remember what these surfaces are: the current plan's crew, regenerated wholesale on every scheduling run. They are not a record of who worked, which still comes from punches and actual dates through the shop-floor kiosk.

A First Configuration Worth Copying

A minimal, honest setup for a shop with one gated operation looks like this. One skill, TIG-Weld. Three operators entered, of whom two are certified and one is not, because rostered is not the same as qualified and modeling that difference is the entire point. Both certified people rostered on Day Shift Monday to Friday. One known vacation entered. One routing step with required skill TIG-Weld and attention 1.0, left on automatic operator selection.

Run the schedule, then open Dispatch. If the certified people's hours look like your reality, expand to the next skill. If they do not, fix the roster before adding anything, because every later skill inherits the same roster foundation.

Where to Go Next

The mechanics behind what you just configured, including how hours are booked and why a pinned step slides, are in how EDGEBIC books operator hours. The configuration traps, from expiry surprises to unstaffable shifts, are collected in operator and skill mistakes. If your gated operations also run on interchangeable machines, creating a work center group is the machine-side companion, and the two constraints compose on one step. For the wider platform, start at the complete EDGEBIC guide or the how-to hub.

Bringing an operator or certification list out of an existing system? People and skills arrive the same way as every other master data table, through import masks.