My Job Will Not Start and I Cannot See Why

A job sitting later than it should, with no visible reason, is most often waiting on material, and the fastest diagnosis is to check the amber markers before anything else. In EDGEBIC by User Solutions, a job pegged to inbound supply says so in three places. The harder case, and the one worth reading to the end for, is when the job is short and there is no marker at all, because nothing is covering the shortfall.

This post works through five causes in diagnosis order, cheapest first. It sits under the EDGEBIC planning guide and assumes the vocabulary in what material pegging means.

Start Where the Answer Is Loud

Before theorizing, look at the three surfaces that would already be telling you.

If any of them shows a reference, the diagnosis is finished: the job is pegged to that purchase order and cannot start until the material lands. Skip to what you want to do about it.

If all three are clean and the job is still parked, keep reading. The absence of a marker is information, but it is ambiguous, and disambiguating it is most of this post.

Cause 1: It Is Pegged and the Marker Was Missed

The most common outcome, and worth ruling out properly rather than by glance.

Open the Material Pegging report and find the job. If it is listed, you get the whole story on one row: the component, the purchase order it waits on, the date the material becomes available, and the date the first operation can then start. Compare that first-operation date to where the job actually sits and the arithmetic usually closes.

What to do: decide whether the promise is real. If the supplier has already slipped, update the promised date and re-run so the plan tells the truth. If the promise stands and the date is unacceptable, the lever is the supply, not the schedule: expedite, split the delivery, or find the material elsewhere.

Cause 2: Nothing Covers the Shortfall, So There Is No Marker

This is the one that catches experienced planners, because it presents as an absence.

When a job needs material it does not have and no purchase-order line covers the shortfall, EDGEBIC does not invent a peg. There is no line to name, so no reference exists, so no amber marker is drawn. What it does instead is record a warning in the scheduling diagnostics naming the job, the component and the shortfall quantity, and then plan the material against the item's lead time as though supply would appear.

That fallback produces dates. It does not produce material. On the board the job looks exactly like a job with a full rack behind it.

How to tell: the job is late, its routing consumes a material it is short of, and it does not appear on the Material Pegging report. That report lists jobs that are pegged, so a job you expected to see and do not is a job with no covering supply.

Confirm it: open the Scheduled Receipts report and look for that material. Nothing inbound at all is your answer.

What to do: raise a purchase order for the shortfall, set a realistic promised date, set the status to Open, and re-run. The job will now peg honestly, and it will probably move later. That is the point. This is exactly why the Scheduled Receipts report belongs in a pre-publish routine rather than being opened when something has already gone wrong.

Cause 3: The Material Is Not a Stocked Item

Inventory netting and pegging are skipped entirely for a product that is not marked as a stocked item. No netting, no shortfall, no peg, no marker, whatever the rack actually holds.

How to tell: the purchase order is open with a future promise, the product is definitely consumed by the routing, and still nothing pegs.

What to do: tick the stocked-item setting on the product form and re-run. Everything else about the job is already correct; the product was simply outside the inventory conversation.

Cause 4: The Promise Lands Before the Need Date

Sometimes there is no peg because none is needed, and the plan is right.

If a purchase order's promised date falls on or before the date the job needs the material, that quantity is counted as supply that will simply be available rather than as something to wait for. No peg, no marker, and the material row ends where you would expect.

How to tell: look at the material row's own end date and the following operation's start. If they line up and the job's lateness is somewhere else in the routing, material is not your problem.

What to do: nothing, unless the promise itself is wrong. Then correct it and re-run. Look downstream instead: capacity on the next work center, queue or transit time on the step, or a dependency further along.

Cause 5: The Job Has Already Started

A job with logged actuals is never re-netted or re-pegged. Its material draw is history, not a plan, so a reschedule leaves that part of it alone.

How to tell: the job has actuals recorded and does not change on reschedule regardless of what you do to purchasing.

What to do: treat it as expediting rather than planning. The material either arrives or it does not; moving the plan around a job already on the floor achieves nothing.

And the Case Where It Is Not Material at All

If none of the above fits, the cause is probably not material. A step that looks like a material step but carries a work center is a real operation scheduling real hours, and transit or queue time on a step produces a gap that reads like waiting. Those are traced in a material step is holding up my job.

The Diagnosis in Order

Run it top to bottom and stop when it closes.

1. Look at the three amber surfaces. A reference anywhere ends the search.
2. Open Material Pegging and find the job. Present means pegged, and the row explains the date. Absent, on a job short of material, is the strong signal for cause 2.
3. Open Scheduled Receipts for that material. Nothing inbound confirms it.
4. Check the product is a stocked item.
5. Compare the promise to the need date. Earlier or equal means no peg is expected.
6. Check for logged actuals.
7. Re-run Schedule and Re-Schedule. Purchasing edits never move anything already on the board, so a run is required before any of it shows.

Most jobs resolve at step one or two. The value of the rest of the list is that it distinguishes "the plan is waiting for a good reason" from "the plan is quietly assuming material nobody ordered," and those two look identical until you check.