When an ERP carries only items and orders, EDGEBIC still schedules at finite capacity: you build each product's routing once inside EDGEBIC, model your work centers there, and let the ERP feed only the item list and open demand. The scheduler needs four things, and only two of them have to come from the ERP. The other two, work centers and routings, are manufacturing facts that live naturally in the scheduling tool.
EDGEBIC by User Solutions treats routing data as something you can supply from any source, so a lighter ERP that never modeled operations is not a dead end. This is a common situation for shops on inventory-and-accounting systems, and the fix is straightforward. The broader integration model is in the EDGEBIC ERP integration overview.
What a schedule actually needs
A finite capacity schedule needs four kinds of data:
- Items (what you make)
- Work centers (the machines and their capacity)
- Routings (how each item is made, step by step)
- Open orders (the demand)
Many ERPs, especially inventory-first and accounting-first platforms, carry only items and orders. They know what you sell and what is due, but not that a part visits three machines in sequence. That is not a scheduling blocker, because two of the four inputs do not have to originate in the ERP.
Build the two the ERP lacks, once
Work centers and routings are process knowledge, and most shops already hold it, just not in the ERP. Put it where the scheduler uses it:
- Work centers are defined once in EDGEBIC: how many identical machines each center holds, its shifts, setup defaults, efficiency, and whether it is a bottleneck. This is a small, stable list that rarely changes.
- Routings are built once per product, either typed into the graphical routing designer or imported from a simple spreadsheet listing product, work center, sequence, and run time. Once a product's routing exists, every future order for that product reuses it, so the effort amortizes across repeat work.
For products you make repeatedly, this is a modest one-time investment. For a shop with high repeat business, the routing library becomes an asset the ERP never had.
Let the ERP feed only items and orders
With work centers and routings resident in EDGEBIC, the ERP's job shrinks to two exports:
| Direction | Data | How it moves |
|---|---|---|
| ERP to EDGEBIC | Items | CSV or Excel export to Product import mask |
| ERP to EDGEBIC | Open orders | Export to order import mask |
| Built in EDGEBIC | Work centers | Defined once in EDGEBIC |
| Built in EDGEBIC | Routings | Built once per product |
| EDGEBIC to ERP | Dated schedule | Excel export from Job View and reports |
Each refresh imports the current item list and open orders through their saved masks. Master data that already matches comes back Reused and untouched, so the recurring sync is fast and its surface is smaller than a full four-file integration, because two of the four data types never leave EDGEBIC.
Keeping routings current
Since routings live in EDGEBIC, you maintain them there. When a part's process changes, edit its routing once in the designer or re-import that one product from a spreadsheet, and every future order for that part schedules against the new routing automatically. Jobs already scheduled keep the frozen routing snapshot they were planned with, so the change applies going forward without disturbing work in progress. There is no export-import round trip to keep routings synced, and no risk of the ERP and EDGEBIC disagreeing about the process, because only EDGEBIC holds it.
When the ERP later gains routing data
If you migrate to an ERP that does carry routings, nothing you built is wasted. You can switch to importing routings from the new system through the standard two-pass routing import, or keep maintaining them in EDGEBIC if that stays cleaner for your shop. The choice is yours because routing data is decoupled from any single source. The full field list for every file, for when you do move routings in, is in which ERP fields EDGEBIC needs to schedule.
Start with your items and this week's orders
You do not need routing data to begin. Export your item list and this week's open orders, then bring them to a demo and build a couple of routings live, so you leave with a real product scheduled against real capacity. The QuickBooks and Fishbowl guides cover the same items-and-orders pattern for those inventory-first systems, and the EDGEBIC product overview shows what the engine does once the routings exist.
Yes. Routings do not have to come from the ERP. You build each product's operations once inside EDGEBIC's routing designer or import them from a spreadsheet, and the ERP feeds only items and open orders. The scheduler then has everything it needs: what to make from the ERP, and how to make it from the routings you defined.
It is a one-time cost per product, and most shops already have the process knowledge, just not inside the ERP. You can type routings into the graphical designer or import them from a spreadsheet that lists product, work center, sequence, and run time. Once a product's routing exists, it is reused on every future order for that product, so the effort amortizes quickly across repeat work.
Through the normal item and order import masks. Each refresh imports the current item list and open orders; master data that already matches comes back Reused and untouched, and only the routings stay resident in EDGEBIC. The sync surface is smaller than a full integration because two of the four data types never move from the ERP.
Expert Q&A: Deep Dive
Q: We run QuickBooks, which knows our items and invoices but nothing about how parts are made. Does that rule out finite capacity scheduling entirely?
A: Not at all, and it is one of the most common starting points. An inventory-and-accounting system like QuickBooks holds exactly two of the four things a schedule needs, the items and the demand, and is simply silent on the other two, the work centers and the routings. Those two you define once inside EDGEBIC, where they arguably belong anyway, since machine counts, shift calendars, and operation times are manufacturing facts rather than accounting facts. From then on QuickBooks exports items and open orders, EDGEBIC supplies the routings and capacity model, and the scheduler has a complete picture. Shops in this situation often find the split cleaner than forcing routing data into an ERP that was never designed to hold it, because the process knowledge lives in the tool that actually uses it to schedule.
Q: If routings live only in EDGEBIC, what happens when we change how a part is made?
A: You edit that part's routing once in the graphical designer, or re-import it from a spreadsheet, and every future order for that part is scheduled against the new routing automatically. Jobs already scheduled keep the frozen routing snapshot they were planned with, so the change applies going forward and does not disturb work in progress. Because the routing is not tied to the ERP, there is no export-import round trip to keep it current and no risk of the ERP and EDGEBIC disagreeing about the process, since only EDGEBIC holds it. The trade is that routing edits happen in EDGEBIC rather than the ERP, which for a system that has no routing concept is not really a trade at all.
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