What Is Percent Complete in Manufacturing Scheduling? EDGEBIC

Percent complete is how far along a job is, measured by hours worked against hours planned rather than by counting finished steps. In EDGEBIC by User Solutions, it is actual hours divided by planned hours, capped at 100, so a job with 48 of 78 planned hours logged reads about 62 percent. Because it is hours-based, a long machining step carries far more weight than a two-minute inspection, which gives a truer read on progress than a step count would.

This entry is part of the EDGEBIC glossary series. For the broader planning vocabulary, see the manufacturing glossary. Percent complete measures physical progress, while earned value turns that progress into a cost and schedule comparison against the Budget at Completion baseline.

How Percent Complete Works

The instinct is to count steps: five done out of eight is 62 percent. EDGEBIC deliberately does not do that, because steps are not the same size. A routing might pair a 24-hour CNC operation with a 15-minute deburr, and treating them as equal would make progress meaningless.

Instead the calculation is hours-based:

• if the job is complete, percent = 100
• else if planned hours and actual hours are both above zero, percent = minimum of 100 and actual hours divided by planned hours times 100
• else if the job has quantity and actual quantity, percent = minimum of 100 and actual quantity divided by ordered quantity times 100 (a piece-based fallback)
• else percent = 0

The piece fallback only runs when there are no hours to work with, which stops a near-zero auto-calculated piece figure (say 0.001 pieces on a quantity of 1) from hijacking the number down toward zero. In practice, hours drive it, so the big steps dominate as they should.

Completion has its own rule. A job reads complete only when every operational work-center step carries an actual end date. Marking one early step done does not flip the whole job, and the zero-hour sub-assembly roll-up row is excluded so it cannot gate completion. The actual end date, and the early-or-late delta, stay empty until the last step closes, so a half-finished job never shows a finish date.

A Concrete Example

Take a job planned at 78 hours across its operational steps. As actuals come in, 48 hours are logged, with the final CNC step still running.

• percent complete = minimum of (100, 48 divided by 78 times 100) = about 62 percent

Even if four of the job's five steps are closed, the number stays near 62 percent because the unfinished CNC step is a big share of the hours. A step count would have said 80 percent; the hours-based figure says 62, and 62 is the truth of how much work is actually left.

Because the last step is still open, the job's actual end date is empty and no early-or-late delta shows yet. When that step closes, percent complete jumps to 100, the end date populates, and the delta against the due date appears, all at once.

How EDGEBIC Uses Percent Complete

Percent complete is a column on the Job Progress report, a snapshot of every manufacturing order with its status, planned hours, actual hours, percent complete, due date, and days versus due. An in-pane filter narrows the list to scheduled jobs only. The same hours-based figure also drives the end-product actuals roll-up, the canonical answer to how far along a job's end item is: it aggregates the job's operational rows against the single end product while excluding sub-assembly roll-ups and component splits, so mirrored or nested rows never double-count.

Because the number respects the site-wide primary-hours-only basis, parallel routings report against primary hours rather than inflating both the numerator and denominator with mirrored siblings. The result is one consistent progress figure that the Job Progress report, the Job View, and the end-product roll-up all agree on. For how job status and lateness are classified once a job is complete, see the job status donut walkthrough.