SQDC is the lean mnemonic for a daily standup board, ordering the day's review by Safety, Quality, Delivery, and Cost, in that deliberate priority. In EDGEBIC by User Solutions, the Standup dashboard builds four SQDC tiles, one per category, so a shift huddle reads the plant's state in the order lean intends: safety before quality, quality before delivery, delivery before cost. Where EDGEBIC cannot compute a tile honestly, it marks that tile Offline rather than showing a fabricated number.
This entry is part of the EDGEBIC glossary series. For the broader vocabulary, see the manufacturing glossary. SQDC tiles carry a data quality chip that tells you whether each number is live, planned, or offline.
How SQDC Works
The four letters are an order of precedence, not just a checklist. Safety comes first because no amount of output justifies harming a person. Quality comes second because shipping defects helps no customer. Delivery comes third. Cost comes last, not because it is unimportant, but because chasing cost ahead of the other three tends to break them. A standup board built to SQDC keeps the conversation in that sequence every day, so the team talks about people and product before it talks about money.
EDGEBIC maps each letter to a tile on the Standup dashboard:
| Category | What the tile shows | Chip |
|---|---|---|
| Safety | a dash, because no incident log exists yet | Offline |
| Quality | a dash, because no defect or scrap log exists yet | Offline |
| Delivery | all-time on-time-in-full from order end versus due date | Plan |
| Cost | cost variance: actual minus estimated over estimated | Live |
The honesty of the Offline marks is deliberate. The Safety and Quality tiles have no source entity to compute from, so they show a dash instead of a green number that would imply everything is fine. The design note here is pointed: an older dashboard once carried a tile labeled first pass yield that actually computed delivery, and the SQDC rebuild made every tile say plainly what it is, including admitting when it cannot measure yet.
A Concrete Example
Take the Cost tile over a 30-day window, computed from completed orders by their completion day.
| Date | Estimated cost | Actual cost | Variance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 1 | $10,000 | $9,800 | minus 2.0% |
| Jun 5 | $8,000 | $8,500 | plus 6.3% |
| Jun 8 | $12,000 | $11,900 | minus 0.8% |
| Jun 11 | $5,000 | $7,000 | plus 40% |
| Jun 13 | $6,000 | $6,000 | 0% |
The tile's headline value is the total variance:
- (43,200 actual minus 41,000 estimated) divided by 41,000 times 100 = plus 5.4 percent
So the month's completed jobs ran 5.4 percent over their estimated cost, with the pain concentrated on June 5 and June 11. The tile carries a Live chip because the figure comes from real completed-order costs, and its sparkline sits near zero most days with two visible spikes. That single number, read in its place after Safety, Quality, and Delivery, tells the standup where the cost leaks are without pretending the plant has no bigger priorities.
How EDGEBIC Uses SQDC
The SQDC band is the anchor of EDGEBIC's Standup dashboard, the view built for a shift huddle rather than an executive review. Its walkthrough is how to use the standup dashboard in EDGEBIC, which covers the SQDC tiles alongside the andon strip and late-jobs panel.
Two things make the SQDC band trustworthy. First, the fixed order keeps the daily conversation on safety and quality before cost, which is the whole point of the mnemonic. Second, every tile carries a data quality chip, so no one mistakes an Offline dash for a good score or a Plan figure for a live one. That pairing of a disciplined order and honest provenance is what separates a working tier board from a wall of green numbers nobody believes. For the other EDGEBIC dashboards and who each is built for, see EDGEBIC dashboards explained.
Expert Q&A: Deep Dive
Q: Our SQDC Cost tile reads +5.4 percent for the last 30 days. Good or bad?
A: Bad, mildly. The Cost tile shows cost variance as actual cost minus estimated cost over estimated cost. A positive figure means the completed jobs cost more than planned, so +5.4 percent is a 5.4 percent overrun. In the book's month, five completion days summed to $43,200 actual against $41,000 estimated, giving that +5.4 percent, with the damage concentrated on two spike days. The tile carries a Live chip because it is computed from real completed-order costs, not a projection.
Q: The Safety tile just shows a dash. How do I get a real number there?
A: You cannot yet, and that is intentional. The Safety tile is Offline because EDGEBIC has no incident log entity to compute a safety metric from, so it shows a dash rather than a misleading green. The same is true of the Quality tile without a defect log. When those data sources exist, the tiles will populate; until then, the honest blank is the point. Use the Delivery and Cost tiles, which do have real sources, for the numbers your standup can act on today.
Frequently Asked Questions
Ready to Transform Your Production Scheduling?
User Solutions has been helping manufacturers optimize their production schedules for over 35 years. One-time license, 5-day implementation.
User Solutions Team
Manufacturing Software Experts
User Solutions has been developing production planning and scheduling software for manufacturers since 1991. Our team combines 35+ years of manufacturing software expertise with deep industry knowledge to help factories optimize their operations.
Share this article
Related Articles
The EDGEBIC Scheduling Glossary Index
A themed index to the EDGEBIC glossary: scheduling engine, capacity and calendars, materials and planning, shop floor, reporting, quoting, and data import terms, defined in plain language.
What Is the Critical Chain in Manufacturing Scheduling?
The critical chain is the longest dependent path through a plan once shared machine contention is counted, not just step precedence. Here is how it differs from the critical path.
What Does Finite Capacity Mean in EDGEBIC?
Finite capacity means the scheduler refuses to book more hours on a machine than that machine actually has. See exactly how EDGEBIC enforces it, day by day and shift by shift.