What Material Pegging Means, in Plain Terms

Material pegging is EDGEBIC making a job wait on a specific inbound purchase-order line rather than pretending the material is already on the shelf. The alternative, and the default in a lot of scheduling tools, is to schedule the job as though the steel were in the rack and discover the truth on the shop floor. In EDGEBIC by User Solutions, a job short of material is tied to the supply that will cover it, dated at the supplier's promise, and marked in amber so the reason for the move is never a mystery.

This post explains how a peg forms, how to read the reference it carries, where the marker appears, and what clears it. It sits under the EDGEBIC planning guide and pairs with why the promised date matters more than the order date.

Stock First, Then the Shortfall

A peg is not the first thing that happens. It is the second.

When the scheduler reaches a material step on a routing, it first consumes what is physically on hand. Only what is left over becomes a shortfall, and only the shortfall gets pegged. A job needing 50 plates with 20 in the rack consumes the 20 and pegs 30.

That is why a peg reference carries a quantity as well as a purchase order number. It is not saying "this job is waiting on PO-9912." It is saying "this job is waiting for 30 units on PO-9912." How the on-hand half of that works is covered in how EDGEBIC nets demand against stock.

If nothing is short, nothing pegs. A job with enough material on the shelf is limited only by machine capacity, and no marker appears because there is nothing to wait for.

What a Peg Does to the Schedule

Once a shortfall is matched to an inbound line, three things follow.

The material row stretches to the promised date on that line. It is no longer an instant step; it now spans from the job's start out to the day the goods land.

The first operation moves to after the material arrives. A job whose sawing was planned for 6 July, waiting on steel promised 13 July, now saws on the 13th. Everything downstream of that operation follows.

An amber marker appears on every planning surface, carrying the reference, so a planner reading the board a fortnight later can see why the job sits where it does without asking anyone.

The move is the point. A job that reads as starting on the 6th when its steel lands on the 13th is not an optimistic plan, it is a wrong one, and the shop floor pays for it.

Reading the Reference

The peg reference is short and complete. A reference such as PO-9912 · 30 @ 07/13 reads as: 30 units are coming in on purchase order PO-9912, promised on 13 July.

When one purchase order does not cover the whole shortfall, EDGEBIC chains several together with a plus sign, and the job waits for the last of them to land. That is correct rather than pessimistic: a job cannot start on part of its material.

Give purchase orders stable, readable numbers for exactly this reason. That reference is what a planner reads inside a tooltip three weeks later, and what a buyer quotes back at the supplier on the phone.

Where the Amber Marker Appears

Three surfaces show the same fact, all in amber, and all three tooltips read the same way.

The Gantt marker sits bottom-left specifically because the other corners are already spoken for by other indicators, so the three signals never collide on a busy board.

One Delivery, One Job

A rule worth knowing before it surprises you: inbound units are reserved as they are pegged.

If two jobs both need the same plate and only one delivery is inbound, the first job to peg takes what it needs and the second waits for supply beyond that. The same 30 plates are never promised to two jobs.

This occasionally reads as unhelpful, because the second job moves further out than a planner expected. It is the correct behavior, and the alternative is worse: a plan where two jobs both count on one delivery is a plan that looks fine on screen and fails on the day. If both jobs genuinely need to run, the answer is more supply, not a more generous plan.

A Worked Peg

A job for 50 widgets has its first sawing operation planned for Monday 6 July. Its routing consumes one plate per unit, so it needs 50. The rack holds 20.

A buyer raises a purchase order for 30 plates, promised Monday 13 July, and sets its status to Open. Nothing on the Gantt moves yet, because purchasing edits change what the scheduler will believe, not what it has already committed.

The planner runs Schedule + Re-Schedule. Now:

The job is one week later than it looked, for a reason that is written on the screen in three places.

What Clears a Peg

Two things, and only two.

Receiving the goods. When the delivery is received against the line, on-hand rises immediately through the same inventory ledger every other stock movement uses. At the next schedule run the whole quantity comes from stock, the peg vanishes, the amber clears, and the job is limited by capacity alone. That path is covered in receiving against a purchase order line.

Removing the supply. Setting the purchase order back to Draft or Canceled takes it off the inbound timeline, so the job loses its peg at the next run. That is a real risk to watch for: the job does not get better, it just stops being able to say what it is waiting for.

Note also that a job which has already started is never re-netted or re-pegged. Its material draw is history, so a reschedule leaves it alone.

The Honest Gap

One thing pegging deliberately does not do: invent a peg when nothing covers the shortfall.

If a job is short and no purchase-order line covers it, EDGEBIC records a warning in the scheduling diagnostics and falls back to planning the material against the item's lead time. The dates it then produces assume material nobody has ordered. Crucially, no amber marker appears, because there is nothing to wait on, so an unordered material looks exactly like a material you already have.

That is why the Scheduled Receipts report belongs in a pre-publish routine: it is the surface that shows the gap the schedule cannot.