What Carries Forward From RMDB to EDGEBIC, and What Is New

Upgrading from RMDB to EDGEBIC carries your data, scheduling concepts, ERP data flows, and support relationship forward, while adding a new engine generation on top. In EDGEBIC by User Solutions, the foundation a decade of RMDB use built up stays familiar: master data moves via import masks, finite capacity and routings behave as you expect, and the same support team stays with you. What is new is additive, a unified application, a visual routing designer, a deeper engine, labor constraints, an optimizer, and a kiosk. The upgrade is continuity, not a replacement that discards your work.

The upgrade is designed as continuity

The instinct to protect what works is right. A scheduling system a shop has run for years holds accumulated knowledge, and no upgrade should ask you to throw it away. EDGEBIC is built on that principle. It is the next generation of the same product line, inheriting RMDB's finite capacity scheduling depth proven over 35 years, and RMDB, the proven classic, remains fully supported while you transition on your own timeline.

So the honest framing is two lists: what carries forward, and what is genuinely new. Both are additive to your position, never subtractive. The full path is on the RMDB to EDGEBIC upgrade guide.

What carries forward

Four things move with you, and they are the four a decade of RMDB use built up.

Your master data. Items, work centers, routings, calendars, and customers come into EDGEBIC through built-in Excel and CSV import masks. You export from RMDB, map the columns once per entity, and import. Routings come across through the two-pass import that wires step sequences automatically, covered in moving your RMDB routings into EDGEBIC. Nothing is re-entered by hand.

Your scheduling concepts. Finite capacity, routings, work centers, shifts, and what-if analysis all behave the way your planners expect. The mental model transfers directly, so the team is productive from the first day rather than relearning the fundamentals.

Your ERP data flows. EDGEBIC uses the same import-export approach RMDB always has: items, work centers, routings, and orders in; schedules and dates out, through Excel, CSV, or database masks. The way you exchange data with your ERP does not change, which means the integration you already run keeps running.

Your support relationship. Same team, same 35 years of experience, both products supported in parallel. Upgrading does not restart your relationship with User Solutions; it continues it.

If you also run EDGEBI, your graphical instincts carry forward too: the interactive Gantt and drag-and-drop scheduling work as they always have, as covered in what EDGEBI users gain in EDGEBIC.

What is genuinely new

Everything above stays the same. Here is what the upgrade adds.

One application instead of two. RMDB plus EDGEBI meant two installs sharing a database. EDGEBIC is a single modern application built on .NET 8, with the engine and the graphical experience in one place.

A graphical routing designer. Build and edit routings as drag-and-drop flow charts, with sub-assemblies, annotations, and product images on the canvas, then schedule straight from the diagram. The way your factory flows is the way you draw it.

A new engine generation. Theory of Constraints anchor scheduling, backward just-in-time scheduling, work center groups that re-shop the best available machine on every reschedule, parallel and alternate work centers, lot streaming, and sequence-dependent setup matrices.

Labor as a real constraint. Operators, skills, certifications with expiry dates, weekly rosters, and time off. A step that needs a certified welder waits for one, instead of the schedule pretending the person is available.

A schedule optimizer. A multi-run layer guaranteed never worse than your baseline, plus a mathematical layer that reports a proven optimality gap. You review a side-by-side comparison and accept or discard, so nothing changes without your decision.

Shop-floor actuals built in. A kiosk app lets operators start, count, pause, and complete work. Reschedules preserve everything already done and move only future work, resuming from where the shop actually is.

A worked comparison

Consider a routing change on a busy day.

In RMDB today, the planner edits the routing in a grid, reschedules the plant, and reads the new dates. The engine respects finite capacity, and the plan is sound.

In EDGEBIC, the same planner opens the routing as a flow chart and drags a node to reorder an operation. They flag the bottleneck work center so it anchors the schedule the TOC way. They run the optimizer, glance at the comparison, and accept a sequence that cuts two changeovers using the setup matrix. When the reschedule runs, this morning's completed work stays put because the kiosk already reported it. Every input the planner used, the routing, the work centers, the shifts, carried over from RMDB. Every capability they added was new.

That is the shape of the upgrade: the same foundation, more range on top.

Why this protects your investment

An upgrade that strands your data or forces a relearn destroys value. This one does the opposite. The data moves through masks, the concepts translate directly, the ERP approach is unchanged, and the support continues. RMDB stays supported in parallel, so you are never forced off something that works before the replacement has earned trust. The result is that your RMDB investment carries forward intact and gains capabilities that were not possible on the previous generation.

The takeaway

From RMDB to EDGEBIC, your data, scheduling concepts, ERP data flows, and support all carry forward, and the new capabilities, a unified app, a visual routing designer, a deeper engine, labor constraints, an optimizer, and a kiosk, are additive. RMDB remains fully supported, so the upgrade is continuity rather than a cutover. You keep everything you built and gain what the previous generation could not do. Read the full path on the RMDB to EDGEBIC guide, see the platform in full on the EDGEBIC overview, and when you plan the move, start with running RMDB and EDGEBIC side by side.