What Is a Parallel Work Center Type?

A parallel work center type is the setting on one extra machine listed against a routing step, deciding how that particular machine behaves when the step is scheduled. It takes four values, of which two are the ones you configure in practice: independent, where the machine runs alongside the primary with its own capacity checked, and dependent, where it mirrors the primary exactly. EDGEBIC by User Solutions reads this per-entry setting when it decides whether a machine can block placement or simply copies the primary's window.

How it works

A routing step names one primary machine. It may also list extra machines. Each of those extra entries carries its own behavior setting, and that setting is what the scheduler consults.

Independent means the machine is a real, separately booked resource. The scheduler verifies it has capacity in the target window, consumes that capacity, and treats its load like any other booking. Work is distributed across the group, so a large quantity clears faster than it would on the primary alone. The cost is that placement now depends on every independent machine being free at once.

Dependent means the machine mirrors the primary. It takes the primary's start and end unchanged, and its capacity is deliberately not checked, because the machines are physically one operation moving together. The hours booked against it can be scaled by a factor, so a lighter or faster secondary can be charged less than the primary, but the timing never diverges. Scaling changes the hours; it never changes the clock.

Two further values exist. Sequential is reserved and not wired into the engine, so it does not produce a run-after-the-primary schedule despite its name. Parallel is an older general label that behaves as a synonym for independent in most contexts. Both are safe to leave alone; neither is the right tool for a routing you are building now.

There is a companion flag that says the same thing from the other direction: whether the entry's capacity is finite. An entry whose capacity is treated as finite is checked and consumed, which is the independent behavior. An entry whose capacity is bypassed is mirrored, which is the dependent behavior. Keeping the two settings consistent avoids a routing that describes itself two different ways.

A concrete example

Take a drilling operation on a large frame. The recipe card says three heads work the frame together.

If those three heads sit on one gantry and move as a unit, each extra head is dependent. The gantry starts at eight, finishes at four, and all three heads show that window. Nobody schedules head two for a different job at noon, because head two is not separable. Its capacity is not checked because there is nothing independent to check.

Now change the shop. The three drills are three standalone machines on the floor, and the operation is simply "drill 300 holes, use whatever is free." Each extra drill is independent. The scheduler verifies all three have room in the same window, splits the holes among them, and each consumes its own hours. If drill two is booked for something else, the operation waits rather than starting short-handed.

The frame is the same, the hole count is the same, and the routing step looks similar on the page. The parallel work center type on each extra entry is what tells the engine which shop it is scheduling.

How EDGEBIC uses it

The setting is edited where extra machines are added to a step, and the scaling multiplier for a mirrored machine's hours sits next to it. That multiplier has its own glossary entry: parallel factor.

Extra machines serve two quite different purposes on a step, and there is a higher-level discriminator that separates them: see alternative work center category for the distinction between a machine that runs alongside the primary and one that replaces it. The replacement case has its own term, true alternate work center.

Configuring a step so two machines really do run together, including the shared-calendar requirement that independent groups depend on, is walked through in how to make two operations run in parallel in EDGEBIC. The step-level companion setting is covered in BOR work center type. For the wider vocabulary, see the manufacturing glossary, and to see parallel machines inside a live plan, explore EDGEBIC.