Tools and fixtures are not one of the eight import masks, so you build the list by hand, and the whole job is smaller than it looks if you enter only the tools that are genuinely contested. In EDGEBIC by User Solutions the import masks cover products, work centers, customers, sales orders, routings, actuals, plant holidays, and shifts. Everything else is entered by hand, and the tool list is one of those. The good news is that a tool carries very few fields. The risk is that one of them, quantity, is easy to fill in wrong in a way that quietly corrupts every schedule you build afterward.
Before you start
Get three things settled first.
Confirm the tools tab is in your build. Tools and fixtures are a newer capability and the screens may not be present in every installation. If they are not, nothing breaks: a shop with no tools defined schedules exactly as it did before, and the requirement simply is not available to set.
Finish your routing imports. A routing re-import replaces that product's entire routing for the run, so any hand-set requirement on a step is at risk while imports are still in flight. Load and settle the routings, then attach tools. The wider ordering question is covered in the order to import your data into EDGEBIC.
Decide which tools deserve to exist. The point of modeling a tool is to expose a clash a machine-only plan hides: two mills free on Monday, one fixture between them. A tool that is never contested adds a constraint and buys nothing. Bring across the scarce, shared, expensive ones and leave the rest out.
Building the list
- Open the tools editor and start a new tool.
- Enter the tool name, which is what appears in the tool list and in the routing pickers, and the code, which should be your existing asset or fixture tag so the migrated record still matches your maintenance paperwork.
- Set the quantity to the number of physical units you own plant-wide.
- Use the notes field for the machines the tool physically fits. This is reference text for your team, not a scheduling field.
- Leave active ticked for anything still in service. Untick it for a tool you are bringing across for history only.
- Save the tool before doing anything else with it. Downtime cannot be recorded against an unsaved tool.
Then record any known absence. Downtime is a date range when the tool is away for calibration, repair, or a loan, and both dates are inclusive, so the tool is back the day after the end date. Ranges may not overlap each other. Migration is a good moment to load the calibration dates you already know about for the next few months, since a fixture out for a week is a real constraint your old spreadsheet almost certainly did not schedule around. The mechanics are in how to record tool downtime for calibration.
The quantity rule, stated plainly
Quantity is units you own. It is not machines the tool fits.
| What you own | Correct quantity | What it means for the plan |
|---|---|---|
| One fixture that bolts to three mills | 1 | One operation at a time, anywhere in the plant. Everything else queues. |
| Three identical gauges | 3 | Up to three operations can hold one at once, across any mix of machines. |
| A tool currently out of service with none available | 0 | Any step requiring it stops that job's scheduling run and names the tool. |
Carrying a fits-three-machines number into the quantity field is the failure that matters, because it tells the scheduler you can run three jobs simultaneously on one physical object. The resulting plan looks excellent and collapses at the machine. If your legacy spreadsheet had a column for machine compatibility, that column belongs in notes, never in quantity.
Attaching tools to the work
The requirement lives on the routing step, not on the machine. In the routing grid it appears in the step's basic information as the required tool setting, and in the graphical designer as the same field on an ordinary work center node. Material nodes, product nodes, and parallel or alternate child nodes do not carry it. The picker lists active tools only.
Work down your migrated routings and set the requirement on the steps that mount each tool. This is the part that takes real time, and it is why the earlier filtering matters: five contested fixtures across forty routings is an afternoon, forty tools across the same routings is a week. The step-level detail is in how to require a tool on a routing step.
How to check it worked
Run a schedule and read three things.
No unexpected job failures. A step requiring a tool that is inactive, unknown, or at quantity zero stops that job and records a message naming the tool. During migration this usually means you deactivated something you still use, or you set a requirement before creating the tool. Other jobs are unaffected, so the failures point straight at the gaps. The reasoning behind that behavior is in why a missing tool stops the job instead of scheduling anyway.
Jobs moved where you expected. If a shared fixture is modeled correctly, two jobs that used to plan in parallel on two free machines will now hand the tool over instead. Seeing that shift is confirmation the constraint took, not a problem. Compare against how a scheduler handles a shared tool or fixture.
Total hours did not change. The tool constraint changes when work happens, never how much of it there is. If work content moved, something other than tooling changed.
Next steps
Tools are the last of the hand-built entities most shops meet during a migration, alongside the setup matrix, work center groups, and operators. Fold the tool entry into your cutover plan rather than treating it as an afterthought, since it needs the routings to exist first. See the full hand-entry picture in what EDGEBIC cannot import and how to handle it, the routing load itself in moving your RMDB routings into EDGEBIC, and the sequencing in an EDGEBIC migration checklist.
The takeaway
There is no tool import mask, so the list is hand-built, and that is fine because the list should be short. Enter the scarce contested fixtures, set quantity to units owned rather than machines fitted, load the calibration downtime you already know about, and attach the requirement to routing steps only after the routing imports have settled. Then schedule and watch the fixture clashes your old plan was hiding come into view. Bring your fixture list to a walkthrough of EDGEBIC and we will model the contested ones with you.
No. The import masks in EDGEBIC by User Solutions cover eight entity types, and tools are not among them, so the tool list is entered by hand in the tools editor. That is less painful than it sounds, because most shops own a handful of genuinely scarce fixtures rather than hundreds. Enter only the tools that are actually contested, meaning the ones where two jobs can want the same physical object at the same time. A tool nobody ever queues for adds a constraint and buys you nothing.
One, if you own one of them. Quantity is the number of physical units you own plant-wide, not the number of machines the tool fits. The machines are implied by which routing steps require the tool, so a single fixture that bolts to three mills is quantity one and can serve only one operation at a time anywhere in the plant. Entering three because it fits three machines tells the scheduler you can run three jobs at once, and every plan built on that number is fiction.
After the products, work centers, and routings are loaded and settled, and before your first real scheduling run. Tools are hand-entered rather than imported, and the requirement itself lives on a routing step, so the steps have to exist before you can point them at anything. Finish the routing imports first, because a routing re-import replaces that product's entire routing for the run. Then create the tools, then set the required tool on the steps that need one, then schedule.
You have to enter every one you want the scheduler to respect, but that is almost certainly fewer than forty. The question to ask of each mold is whether two jobs can realistically want it in the same window. A mold that belongs to one product, runs on one press, and is never contested does not need to exist as a tool, because the press itself already serializes that work and the tool constraint would add nothing. The molds worth entering are the ones that fit several presses, or that several products share, because those are the clashes a machine-only plan cannot show you. Start with the contested handful, get a schedule you trust, then add more only when a real queue proves you need it. Entering forty on day one is how a migration stalls in data entry for a week and produces a plan nobody trusts anyway."
It maps across as two different things, and separating them is the main mental adjustment. The count of physical units becomes the tool's quantity, and that is the only capacity the tool has. The list of machines it fits does not become a field at all, because you never assign a tool to machines in EDGEBIC. Instead, you set the required tool on the routing steps that use it, and those steps already name their work centers, so the fit is expressed by which steps carry the requirement. Put the machine list in the tool's notes for your own reference and then work down your spreadsheet setting the requirement step by step. The trap is carrying the fits-three-machines number into the quantity field, which is the single most damaging mistake available here."
Expert Q&A: Deep Dive
Q: We are migrating a mold shop with about forty molds. Do we really have to enter every one of them by hand before we can schedule?
A: You have to enter every one you want the scheduler to respect, but that is almost certainly fewer than forty. The question to ask of each mold is whether two jobs can realistically want it in the same window. A mold that belongs to one product, runs on one press, and is never contested does not need to exist as a tool, because the press itself already serializes that work and the tool constraint would add nothing. The molds worth entering are the ones that fit several presses, or that several products share, because those are the clashes a machine-only plan cannot show you. Start with the contested handful, get a schedule you trust, then add more only when a real queue proves you need it. Entering forty on day one is how a migration stalls in data entry for a week and produces a plan nobody trusts anyway.
Q: Our old system tracked fixtures on a spreadsheet with a column for which machines each one fits. How does that map across?
A: It maps across as two different things, and separating them is the main mental adjustment. The count of physical units becomes the tool's quantity, and that is the only capacity the tool has. The list of machines it fits does not become a field at all, because you never assign a tool to machines in EDGEBIC. Instead, you set the required tool on the routing steps that use it, and those steps already name their work centers, so the fit is expressed by which steps carry the requirement. Put the machine list in the tool's notes for your own reference and then work down your spreadsheet setting the requirement step by step. The trap is carrying the fits-three-machines number into the quantity field, which is the single most damaging mistake available here.
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