What Is Schedule Adherence? EDGEBIC Definition and Formula

Schedule adherence is the fraction of operations whose actual start time fell within a tolerance window of their planned start time, measuring whether the shop is running the right jobs at the right time on the right machines. In EDGEBIC it is computed as operations that started within plus or minus 60 minutes of plan, divided by all operations in the window, with a target of 90 percent or better. It is the plan-quality metric a planner watches every morning, and it pairs with schedule attainment, which measures the delivery outcome rather than the start timing.

This entry is part of the EDGEBIC by User Solutions glossary series; for the broader vocabulary of planning, see the manufacturing glossary. For the general KPI framing that applies to any shop, see the schedule adherence KPI overview.

How Schedule Adherence Works

Adherence asks a narrow, honest question: did each operation begin close to when the plan said it should? Output metrics like pieces produced can look healthy while the shop quietly runs jobs in the wrong order, borrows the wrong machine, or slides everything two hours late. Adherence catches that drift because it compares planned start against actual start, operation by operation. A similarly named but different figure, production adherence percent, divides logged hours by planned hours per work center per day and answers a capacity question rather than a timing one.

The tolerance matters. A shop floor never starts exactly on the minute, so EDGEBIC allows a one-hour window: an operation is adherent if its actual start landed within 60 minutes either side of plan. Anything outside that window, in either direction, counts as off-plan.

There is a subtlety worth internalizing. Operations with no logged actual start do not count toward the adherent total. A missing kiosk entry looks identical to a late start in the arithmetic, so a falling adherence number has two possible causes: real delays, or gaps in the data. Reading the tile's delta note ("35 ops moved off plan") tells you the size of the gap; the cause takes a second look.

A Concrete Example

Take a 14-day window, June 1 to June 14. Operations whose planned start falls in that window: 120.

Of those:

• 85 have an actual start within plus or minus 60 minutes of plan.
• 35 have no actual start recorded (not yet run, or the kiosk entry is missing).

Schedule adherence = 85 divided by 120 times 100 = 70.8 percent.

That sits below the 90 percent target, so the Planner tile colors red, and its delta note reads "35 ops moved off plan" (120 minus 85). In the same window, attainment is computed separately: 22 jobs completed, 18 finished by their due date, so attainment = 18 divided by 22 times 100 = 81.8 percent, below the 85 percent target and colored amber. Two numbers, two questions: adherence about start timing, attainment about delivery.

How EDGEBIC Computes and Shows Schedule Adherence

Adherence lives on the Planner tab of the Dashboard Cockpit, rendered as a KPI tile with a 30-day sparkline. A dedicated adherence service computes it over a rolling 14-day past window using the one-hour tolerance, then labels the tile with its data-quality chip. A few product behaviors:

• The tile chip is Live for the operations that logged a real start, because an actual start is a captured event, not a projection.
• The delta note names the size of the gap ("35 ops moved off plan"), which is your starting point when the number drops. From there you move to the job Gantt to see which jobs slipped.
• Attainment sits right beside it with a Plan chip, since it reads the scheduler's projected end date until kiosk completions fully replace it.

Because low adherence often means missing actuals rather than late work, the practical first move is to confirm the kiosk entries exist for the window. Adherence is only as truthful as the actuals feeding it, which is why EDGEBIC keeps logging actual hours and pieces close at hand and marks the tile's provenance explicitly.

Adherence is one of several plan-and-delivery signals; read it with capacity utilization to separate "we started late" from "we were overloaded", and see the EDGEBIC dashboards guide for how the Planner tab assembles the whole picture. The reports that answer "are we on time" go one level deeper into the on-time and late-job panes.