What an Operator Sees at the EDGEBIC Kiosk

The EDGEBIC by User Solutions kiosk idle screen shows one work center's live queue: NEXT UP names the first job to run, COMING UP lists what follows, and YOUR DAY summarizes the shift so far. An operator reads three panels and taps one button, and the terminal never asks them to search, browse, or decide sequence. That deliberate narrowness is what makes the kiosk fast to learn and hard to misuse, and it is the front door to all shop floor data collection in the platform.

The kiosk is an execution terminal, not a planning tool. It lives at the machine, is bound to one work center and one physical lane, and shows only the work the scheduler has queued there. Everything an operator needs to start the next job is on one screen, and nothing that belongs to the planner is.

The Three Panels

NEXT UP. The first queued job for this work center. It shows the job number, the product, the customer, the scheduled start time, a due-date label, and the job's priority. This is the job the big Start Setup button will begin.

COMING UP. The next few jobs behind NEXT UP, in the exact order the scheduler placed them. It answers the operator's natural question ("what is after this?") without letting them reorder anything.

YOUR DAY. The operator's shift so far: today's totals, yesterday's for comparison, and a trend arrow. It is a quiet progress tile, not a scorecard the operator has to manage.

The Operator box holds a free-text name that stamps onto every punch made in the session. The kiosk trusts the floor here, which is why there is no login, PIN, or badge scan at the terminal.

The Buttons That Never Move

The primary action, Start Setup, sits in the same place on every release. This is intentional: an operator who runs a machine a hundred times a shift builds muscle memory, and moving a core button to "improve" a layout only costs them speed. Start Setup begins the NEXT UP job; from there the operator advances through the setup phases to Start Run.

The header carries utilities rather than actions: Switch WC to rebind the terminal mid-shift when one screen serves neighboring machines, History to open the punch drawer, Handoff to open the shift handoff summary, Refresh to re-read the queue after a reschedule, and Manual Entry for typing a day's hours after the fact.

The BOR-Changed Banner

If a yellow banner reads that the routing has changed since this job was scheduled, EDGEBIC has detected that the live routing differs from the snapshot taken when the job was planned. The banner lists the changed fields (work center, setup time, cycle time, or queue time) with old and new values side by side. The operator acknowledges it, and tells the planner if it looks wrong. It never blocks work: it exists so a routing change communicated after scheduling does not ambush the person at the machine.

Why the Kiosk Deliberately Does Less

The kiosk is kept small on purpose, and knowing what it does not do sets the right expectations:

• No schedule editing. Operators cannot move, re-sequence, or reassign work. That authority stays with the planner.
• No plant-wide browsing. The kiosk works its bound work center's queue, not a search box over every job.
• No operator accounts. The Operator box is a trusted free-text name, not a credential.
• No offline mode. The terminal reads and writes the shared database live. If it loses its connection, the operator punches when it returns or uses Manual Entry afterward. For what that means in practice, see what the kiosk does when the network drops.

This is the opposite of a bloated shop-floor MES screen. Every element on the kiosk earns its place by helping an operator start the next job and log it honestly.

A Walk Through One Screen

Tuesday morning at CNC-Mill-1. The terminal is already bound to the machine, so the operator only types a name into the Operator box.

• NEXT UP shows JOB-2026-0101 / Widget-A, customer Acme, scheduled start 08:00, priority High.
• COMING UP lists two jobs behind it.
• YOUR DAY shows yesterday's 6.2 productive hours with an up arrow.
• No banner: the routing matches its snapshot.

The operator taps Start Setup, steps through the changeover phases, and taps Start Run. Within seconds the planner's Job View shows the actual start, and the bar for this operation flips to the in-progress state. Nothing about that flow required the operator to understand the schedule, only to read three panels and press one button.

The YOUR DAY Panel in Practice

The YOUR DAY panel deserves a second look, because it is the one element on the idle screen that speaks to the operator about themselves. It shows the shift's running totals (productive hours and pieces so far), yesterday's figures for comparison, and a trend arrow. It is framed as feedback, not a target the operator must chase, and it draws from the same punch stream everything else does, so it is always current. An operator glancing at it between jobs gets an honest read on how the shift is going without opening a report or asking a supervisor. Because it reflects real punches, an operator who has been diligent about tapping sees an accurate picture, and one who forgot to punch sees the gap, which is a quiet nudge toward the habit that keeps the whole plan fed.

What Reaches the Planner

The kiosk screen is one half of a loop; the other half is the dispatch and Job View surfaces the planner watches. When the operator taps Start Run, the actual start appears on the plan. Run time between taps becomes daily production hours. Good taps become daily actual pieces. Complete Operation gives the operation an actual end, which is what a later reschedule plans downstream work forward from. An open Job View or Actual Live screen refreshes on its own when a kiosk save lands, so a planner watching the floor never has to hit refresh.

The Bottom Line

What an operator sees at the EDGEBIC kiosk is exactly what they need and nothing they do not: one work center's queue, the shift's running total, and a single button to start the next job. The narrowness is the design. It keeps the terminal fast, keeps sequence decisions with the planner, and keeps the punch stream clean enough to feed honest finite capacity scheduling. See the full loop in the shop floor execution guide, or explore the platform at EDGEBIC.