Quoting When the Shop Is Already Full in EDGEBIC

When the shop is already full, EDGEBIC quotes the honest date the remaining capacity supports, then shows you the levers to shorten it. In EDGEBIC by User Solutions, the quote simulation schedules a new job into whatever capacity is left after the existing backlog, so a deep queue produces a later date rather than a false one. A far-out date is not a defect; it is the floor telling you how busy it is. From there, scenarios let you test a second shift, an outside vendor, or weekend production against real capacity, so you can find the customer's date or negotiate from fact.

A full shop is where the rule of thumb fails hardest

An empty shop forgives a lazy quote. Add four weeks to anything and you will probably be fine, because there is capacity everywhere. A full shop is unforgiving. The four-week rule quotes a date the machine cannot support, the job queues behind a month of committed work, and it ships late. The busier you are, the more a fixed lead time lies.

This is exactly the situation where a capacity-aware simulation earns its keep. Because EDGEBIC schedules the quoted job into the gaps that actually remain, the date it returns already accounts for the backlog. When the shop is full, that date will be later, and it will be correct. The alternative, quoting a date the bottleneck physically cannot meet, is how a full shop turns a won order into a late one.

Reading a far-out date

The first reaction to a far-out simulated date is often "the software is wrong." It usually is not. The simulation places the quoted job behind everything already committed, respecting shift boundaries and holidays, and reports the first real finish. If your bottleneck carries weeks of work, the quoted job queues, and the date reflects the queue.

Confirm it in two steps:

• Check the work-center backlog. Open the utilization for the bottleneck the quote routes through. If it is running near or above 100 percent for the weeks in question, the date is the queue, not a fault.
• Trust the mechanism. The simulation uses the same finite capacity engine as production. It did not pad the date; it found the first gap.

A far-out date is the software protecting the promise. It is telling you the truth early, while there is still time to do something about it.

Turning a hard no into a menu of options

The honest baseline is where the work starts, not ends. When the standard date misses the customer's deadline, scenarios let you test what it would take to close the gap, each against the same real capacity.

Reach for these levers when the shop is full:

• A second shift on the bottleneck. Add a work-center capacity override at 150 percent to simulate a second-shift equivalent, and re-run. If the bottleneck is the constraint, this often moves the date the most.
• An outside vendor for a slow step. Add a step override of type Replace, pointing the step at the vendor's work center. The scenario schedules the vendor for that step and leaves the rest in-house.
• Weekend production. Allow weekend shift hours for the scenario, trading a premium for calendar days.
• A boosted or alternate work center. Raise capacity on the machine that is choking the flow, for the scenario only.

A scenario also carries a priority level, and raising it lets the simulated job claim contested capacity sooner. Each scenario re-simulates and stores its own date and cost, so you can line them up. The full mechanism is in comparing routing options for a quote and EDGEBIC what-if scenarios explained.

A worked example

The bottleneck, CNC-Mill-1, is booked solid for a month. A customer wants 200 units of Widget-A in two weeks. The base simulation queues the milling step behind the backlog and returns roughly six weeks. That is the honest baseline.

Rather than decline, the planner builds scenarios:

If the vendor scenario lands inside two weeks at a price the margin can carry, the planner has a real offer: the faster date at the higher cost. If no scenario closes the gap, the planner now has evidence, not instinct, that two weeks is not achievable, and can negotiate the date or scope from fact. The simulation turned a flat no into a menu.

Quoting does not reserve the slot

One honest point to keep straight, especially on a full shop: quoting a job holds nothing. EDGEBIC has no capacity-reservation mechanism. The simulation reads its dates and costs from a temporary job and discards it, so the capacity you just quoted against remains available to any other job.

That means two quotes against the same tight capacity can both come back feasible, because neither one held the slot. The way to protect a quoted date is to convert the winning quote to an order and let a scheduling run place it. Until conversion, the promise is a plan, not a booking. Being clear about this with the customer, and converting promptly when they commit, is what keeps a full-shop quote from being overtaken by the next enquiry.

Follow through on a scenario before you commit

If a scenario wins, remember that applying it copies the numbers onto the quote but does not change the real routing or capacity. Before converting a quote sold on an outside-vendor scenario, make the routing change real in the routing editor; before converting one sold on a second shift, arrange the real shift or per-day capacity override. A scenario promise needs real-world follow-through, or the production run will behave like the standard case and the promise will slip.

The takeaway

A full shop is where honest scheduling matters most. EDGEBIC quotes the date the remaining capacity actually supports, so you never promise time the bottleneck cannot give. A far-out date is the shop telling you it is busy, confirmed by the backlog view. Scenarios turn that honest baseline into a menu of options with real dates and costs, and converting the winner is what protects the slot. You quote from fact, you offer real alternatives, and you negotiate from evidence. Walk the full workflow in the EDGEBIC quoting guide, and see the platform in full on the EDGEBIC overview.