How to Set Up Products in EDGEBIC, Field by Field

To set up product master data in EDGEBIC by User Solutions, you create one record per item you make, buy, or consume, fill in an identifier plus the fields that later modules read, and then give the makeable items a routing. The form is short. What matters is knowing which fields are decorative, which feed quoting, and which change how the schedule reads. This guide walks the sequence in the order that avoids rework.

If you want the concepts first, read product master data and planning attributes explained. This post is the hands-on version.

Before you start

Two optional prerequisites save a second pass:

• Units of measure. Each definition carries a name, a symbol, a category, and a scheduling behavior (hours, pieces, or both). Having them defined means the product form's dropdown is ready.
• Product categories. Categories group the product list, which is grouped by category by default. You can create one on the spot from the product form, but seeding three or four up front (Raw Materials, Sub-Assemblies, Finished Goods) keeps the catalog tidy from item one.

Neither is required. Both take five minutes.

Step 1: Open the product screen and add a product

Open the Product tab from the main navigation and click ➕ Add Product. The Product Configuration dialog opens with the heading Add Product.

Fill the Basic Information section:

Click Save. The dialog closes, the product appears in the grid, and it appears immediately in every product dropdown across the application. No refresh, no restart.

The single most useful habit here: keep Product Id short and human. It appears in narrow grid columns, on the Gantt, and on the shop floor. Formal part numbers live in Product Name, which is the field that enforces uniqueness when you edit it through the form.

Step 2: Decide lead time honestly

Lead time is entered in calendar days and describes the window after the last work center operation before the item is genuinely deliverable: packing, curing, shipping prep. It consumes no machine capacity.

Where it shows up:

• Job View and the scheduler Gantt draw a slate "Lead Time" band after the job's last operation.
• Schedule grids show Item Start (last operation end) and Job End (Item Start plus lead time) as separate columns.
• Backward scheduling aims the last operation at due date minus lead time so the finished item is ready on the promise, not merely work-complete.
• The dashboard judges lateness against the delivery-ready end.

Enter it only for real post-production time. Padding lead time to buy yourself safety hides capacity problems and makes every promise later than it needs to be. Standard planning practice, and the practice this platform is built around, keeps buffers visible in the schedule rather than buried in master data. If your shop needs protection, protect the constraint explicitly rather than inflating a master-data field.

Set it to 0 and Item Start and Job End collapse into one date, so shops with no meaningful tail never see the extra columns do anything.

Step 3: Set the planning attributes you actually use

The planning attribute set decides how an item is replenished, and none of it is required to schedule a job. Fill it when you carry stock for the item.

The order that makes sense:

1. Build method. Make-to-order builds only against a customer order. Make-to-stock builds a buffer and posts a receipt on completion. A third value means "make-to-stock by default, but a per-order override is expected." The mechanics are covered in make-to-stock vs make-to-order.
2. Stocked. This gate controls whether inventory transactions happen at all. Make-to-stock with the stocked flag off can never hold inventory, which is a documented misconfiguration the anomaly report flags.
3. Reorder method and levels. Reorder point uses a single trigger level; min/max uses a lower trigger and an upper refill target.
4. Lot size rule. Suggest the exact shortfall, or round up to a whole multiple of the reorder quantity.
5. Yield. Enter as a fraction: 0.92 for 92 percent good units, 1.0 for none lost. The suggested start quantity inflates so scrap does not become a shortage.
6. Setup family. Assign it if changeovers between this item and others cost real time. See what a setup family is.

The planning guide covers how those attributes feed the projected balance calendar and master production schedule once you use them.

Step 4: Manage categories

Click Manage Categories on the product page toolbar to open the category manager. Click + New, fill in name, code, and description, tick Active, and save. Existing rows have Edit and Delete.

Two things categories buy you:

• The product grid groups by category by default, so a tidy category set makes the catalog navigable at a glance.
• The toolbar's Category: dropdown filters the list, with a clear button to reset it.

Because there is no item-type switch on the form, categories plus the Procured flag are how you keep raw materials, sub-assemblies, and finished goods visibly separate.

Step 5: Verify routing readiness

After the catalog exists, build routings for everything you make. Then come back to the product list and read the BOR column:

• Active BOR means one routing exists and the product is schedulable.
• No BOR means no routing yet, so the product cannot be ordered or scheduled.
• A red legacy warning means the product resolves to more than one routing.

Group the grid on the BOR column to bucket the whole catalog in one click. Products showing No BOR are your build queue. Products showing the red legacy warning are your cleanup queue, because current practice is one routing per product and the scheduling and quoting chain assumes it. Building the routing itself happens in the graphical routing designer.

Step 6: Import instead of typing, past about twenty items

Click 📥 Import on the product page to load products from Excel or CSV. EDGEBIC integrates with your existing systems through configurable import and export masks rather than a fixed connector, so the column layout your ERP already exports is the layout you map. The same route handles bulk updates: a price revision across 200 products belongs in a re-import, not 200 dialogs.

If you are standing up a plant from nothing, the greenfield setup walkthrough shows the full load order with real numbers, and the ERP integration hub explains the mask architecture.

What saving changes, and what it does not

That last row is the important one. Product edits never silently reschedule work. Machine bookings change when you run the scheduler, and not before.

A short worked sequence

Building a small catalog looks like this:

1. Add Widget-A: unit Each, sale price 120.00, rollup cost 48.50, lead time 2, category Finished Goods (created inline).
2. Add Bracket-B: sale price 14.00, rollup cost 10.00, lead time 0.
3. Add the sub-assembly Frame-S with no sale price, because it is never sold alone.
4. Add the raw material Steel-Plate-4mm: rollup cost 6.20, category Raw Materials. It will never get a routing; it appears inside routings as a material.
5. The grid shows the three makeable items as No BOR, which is expected, because routings come next.
6. After the routings exist, the markers flip to Active BOR and the products are schedulable.

One warning before you delete anything

Deleting a product cascades. The confirmation says so plainly: the routing goes with it, and production schedule rows tied to the product are flushed. There is no undo. Old products cost nothing to leave in place, so untick Active instead. The record stays for historical orders and reports, and it disappears from new-order dropdowns.

Next: the deep dive on build method and lead time, the failure modes to avoid, and the complete platform guide. The product hub has the feature map.