How to Use Column Details in EDGEBIC

Column Details is the button in the footer of every documented EDGEBIC by User Solutions report, and it turns any column you do not recognize into a definition, a formula, a unit, and three worked example values in about two seconds. It is the fastest quality improvement available in the reporting layer, and it costs nothing to adopt. This guide covers how to use it well: navigating the dialog, reading each block, following the see-also links, and the four entries worth reading on your first day.

For what the system is and why it was built this way, see self-explaining reports. For the reports themselves, the catalog overview.

Step 1: Open It From Inside the Report

Open any report from the Reports hub, set its range or filters as usual, and look at the window footer. Alongside Export to PDF, Export to Excel, and Close sits Column Details.

Click it and a two-pane dialog opens over the report. Your grid is untouched: filters, sorting, grouping, and your saved column layout all stay exactly as they were, and nothing is re-queried. That makes it safe to open in the middle of an analysis, which is precisely when you need it.

If the button is absent or disabled on a report, that report does not have a documented glossary registered yet. Twenty-one ship today and they cover the daily set, so this is uncommon, but a missing button means "not documented" rather than "broken".

Step 2: Navigate the Two Panes

The left pane lists every documented column of this report, in the order the grid displays them. The right pane shows the selected column. The first entry is selected automatically, so the right pane is populated before you touch anything.

Find your column in the left list by its grid header. Abbreviations are listed as they appear on the grid, so if the column reads SPI, the list entry reads SPI, and the right pane expands it to Schedule Performance Index.

Step 3: Read the Blocks in Order

Each entry shows as many of these blocks as apply, and reading them in this order gets you to a decision fastest.

Go to the examples first when you are grading your own number. The definition tells you what the column is; the examples tell you whether yours is bad. An entry showing 1.00 as on schedule, 0.75 as behind by a quarter, and 1.15 as ahead lets you place your own 0.82 immediately, with no arithmetic.

Go to the formula first when two numbers disagree. Most apparent contradictions between reports are two different denominators, and the formula line names them.

Step 4: Follow the See-Also Links

The see-also list is the part people skip and should not. It exists because several of these metrics are only correct in pairs.

The clearest case is earned value. The SPI entry points at planned value hours, earned value hours, and CPI. That is not decoration: SPI alone tells you a job is ahead, and CPI tells you the same job is over budget, and acting on one without the other is how a plant expedites a job that needed a time study instead. Reading the pair takes ten extra seconds.

A second case is OEE. The availability, performance, and quality entries each define their own factor, and the headline OEE entry gives the formula that multiplies them. Follow the chain and the arithmetic diagnoses itself: availability 72%, performance 95%, quality 98%, so OEE is 0.72 times 0.95 times 0.98, which is 67%, and the availability factor is plainly the problem. Our OEE explainer covers the generic metric if you want the background first.

Step 5: Use It on the Diagnostic Reports

Column Details pays for itself hardest on the reports that produce numbers you did not expect.

On the setup matrix columns, the entry for the setup source lists the real codes and what each means: a cold start used the routing default because nothing ran on that machine before, a family match used a light-to-dark changeover cell, a product match used a specific pair override. Read a row saying "family matrix, white to black, 240 minutes" with that entry open and you know exactly which cell of which matrix to edit.

On the optimizer columns, the entry set defines the goals and presets the optimizer works to and the certificate terms it reports back, including what an optimality gap means and what the never-worse guarantee actually guarantees. Those are the definitions a planner needs before deciding whether to accept a proposal.

On inventory columns for shops running the inventory feature set, the on-hand entry explains that the figure is the signed sum of the ledger and that a negative value means units were issued before the matching receipt landed, which turns an apparent corruption into a documented state.

Step 6: Make It a Habit, Not a Feature

Two rules are enough.

Click before quoting. Any number you have not quoted before gets one click of Column Details before it goes into a meeting, an email, or a customer conversation. Most of the classic misreadings collected in report reading mistakes are prevented by exactly this.

Read four entries on day one. For a new planner, these four carry the traps:

That is a five-minute induction that replaces a training document nobody rereads.

A Small Extra: Tidy the Grid While You Are There

Report grids remember what you do to them. Column order, widths, grouping, and sorting are saved automatically per report and per user, with no save button. So while you are learning a report, use Column Details to decide which columns you genuinely read, then hide the rest and arrange the ones you keep. The arrangement is there next time.

One export caveat that catches people: hidden columns are not exported. If a downstream spreadsheet needs a column you hid, unhide it before exporting. The wider mechanics of ranges, filters, and multi-sheet workbooks are in the running and exporting guide.

A second habit worth pairing with it: when an entry surprises you, check the source line at the bottom of the pane. It names where the value is computed, which is the difference between "I think this comes from the routing" and knowing. On the reports where numbers get challenged most (delivery performance, hours, capacity), that one line turns a disagreement into a lookup, and it is the field an auditor asks about first.

Where This Fits

Column Details documents what a number means. The dashboard cockpit does the equivalent job at a glance, with an info icon on every tile giving its formula and source, and a chip declaring whether the number is a real event or a projection. Between the two, a planner can answer "what is this and how much do I trust it?" anywhere in the product without leaving the screen.

For the engineering discipline that keeps these definitions accurate as formulas change, see why every column carries its own definition. For the vocabulary traps that survive even good definitions, report terminology mistakes. And for the system producing all these numbers, the complete EDGEBIC guide.

Want a walkthrough on a report your team already argues about? Bring it to a demo and we will open the entry for every column on it.