What Is an Actual Entry Mode in Shop Floor Tracking?

An actual entry mode is the convention a shop adopts for which measure it treats as the recorded truth on an operation: the hours worked, the pieces produced, or both captured independently. Hours and pieces are two views of the same work, linked by the operation's pieces-per-hour rate, so recording one side can derive the other. The mode is a decision about which side you count and which you let the rate infer.

This entry defines the term and shows how it plays out inside EDGEBIC by User Solutions. For the wider index of planning terms, see the manufacturing glossary, and for the state segments recorded alongside the counts, read what is a punch type in shop floor tracking.

How It Works

Every tracked operation produces two related numbers: the time it took and the pieces it made. The rate ties them together. An operation rated at two pieces per hour turns six hours into twelve pieces, or twelve pieces into six hours, depending on which end you start from.

The three modes are the three ways a shop can resolve that:

Hours-led. Time is the measured quantity and the piece count is derived from the rate. This suits work where the clock is the honest measure and the exact count matters less than the hours consumed, such as a machining cell running a long cycle.

Pieces-led. Output is the measured quantity and the hours derive from the rate. This suits work where counting is the natural gesture and knowing exactly how many good units exist matters, such as an assembly or molding operation.

Both recorded. Neither number is derived. A real elapsed time and a real count are entered separately, so the two can be compared against each other and against the rate the operation was planned at.

Where the Choice Is Actually Made

This is the part worth being precise about, because the term sounds like a switch and is not one.

At the terminal, both measures are captured at every machine. During a run the elapsed clock advances on its own, and the good and scrap counters are there to tap, one tap per finished piece. Scrap always carries a reason and is kept separate, so the day's piece total counts good units only. Nothing about that display changes from machine to machine, and there is no entry mode field on the work center editor to change it.

The convention asserts itself when a day is logged, in the daily actuals grid used both by the planner and by the terminal's manual entry. That grid has a row per day with the scheduled hours and pieces, the actual hours and pieces, and the rate. A single control decides the mode:

• Auto Calc Hours ticked. Type one side and the other derives from the rate. This is hours-led or pieces-led depending on which column you fill.
• Auto Calc Hours unticked. Both columns become independent, so you enter a measured time and a measured count. This is the both-recorded mode.

The grid then reports the rate used for each day and an effective rate for the operation, which is what makes a divergence between plan and reality visible. That divergence is covered in what is a rate variant.

A Concrete Example

Three operations, three conventions.

A machining cell works hours-led. The operator's run time comes to two hours, and at a rate of forty pieces an hour the day records eighty pieces. Time was measured; pieces were derived.

An assembly station works pieces-led. The counter is tapped as each unit is finished, reaching seventy-five good pieces, and the hours derive from the rate. Output was measured; time was derived.

A paint line records both. The real elapsed time and the real count are entered independently with Auto Calc unticked, so the day carries two measurements rather than one and a calculation. The rate those two numbers produce can now be set against the rate the operation was planned at, and a persistent gap is a signal about the estimate rather than about the day.

How EDGEBIC Uses It

Whichever convention produced them, the resulting hours and pieces flow into the same daily record and the same job actuals, so the schedule, the Log Actuals dialog, and the reports read them uniformly. A completed step's actuals are then immutable to the rescheduler: once captured they anchor the plan while remaining work is replanned around them.

Two practical notes follow. Consistency within an operation matters more than which mode you pick, because mixing hand-typed values on both sides across different days invites mismatches against the rate and produces an effective rate that describes nothing. And the mode governs capture only: it changes how actuals arrive, not what the scheduler does with them, so a plan built before and after a change of convention is identical.

Related definitions are what is a shop floor kiosk for the terminal where the counts originate, pieces per hour for the rate that connects the two sides, what is planned vs actual hours for how the captured numbers are compared against the plan, and what is a prior operations safety prompt in scheduling for what happens when you log a step whose earlier steps have nothing logged at all. For the mechanism in full, see how hours and pieces convert on the floor.