New from User Solutions
EDGEBIC: 35 years of scheduling experience, one next-generation platform
EDGEBIC is the next-generation finite capacity planning and scheduling platform from User Solutions, Inc. It is the successor to Resource Manager DB (RMDB) and EDGEBI: the proven scheduling engine and the graphical experience, rebuilt as one modern application, with a new generation of capabilities on top.
What is EDGEBIC?
EDGEBIC schedules manufacturing orders against the real, finite capacity of your plant: shift calendars, holidays, downtime, machine instances, operator skills, and sequence-dependent changeovers. It answers the question every planner actually has: given everything on the floor right now, when will each job really finish?
Routings are built visually. In the graphical designer, every operation is a node and every dependency is an arrow, so you can lay out, and later reschedule, your whole factory the way you would sketch it on a whiteboard: as a flow chart, by dragging and dropping.
Behind the visual layer sits the deepest engine User Solutions has ever shipped, built on the experience of scheduling for the US Navy, GE, BAE Systems, and Cummins across 35 years.
| Product | EDGEBIC |
|---|---|
| Company | User Solutions, Inc. (founded 1991) |
| Category | Advanced Planning & Scheduling (APS) / Finite Capacity Scheduling |
| Succeeds | Resource Manager DB (RMDB) and EDGEBI |
| Platform | Windows desktop, built on .NET 8 |
| Database | SQLite (single user) or SQL Server (enterprise) |
| Shop floor | Companion kiosk app for operator time and piece tracking |
| ERP integration | Excel / CSV / database import-export masks (JobBOSS, Epicor, Fourth Shift, SAP, and others) |
| Heritage customers | US Navy, GE, BAE Systems, Cummins (User Solutions product line) |
From a routing you drew to a plan you can defend
Six real screens from EDGEBIC by User Solutions, in the order you would actually use them. This is what planning a week looks like when the schedule respects finite capacity. Click any screen to see it full size.
Draw the routing as a flow chart, not a spreadsheet
Build every routing by dragging steps onto a canvas. Steps are nodes, dependencies are arrows, sub-assemblies branch where they really branch, and you can put a photo of the actual machine on each node. The plan ends up looking like the floor it runs on, so an operator recognizes it without training.
Drag and drop routing designer with sub-assemblies and machine images
Give managers the whole schedule on one timeline
A job level Gantt chart that answers the only questions an owner or plant manager actually asks. What ships this week, which jobs are late, and which ones are safe. No operation detail to wade through, no training session required before the first useful glance.
Job level Gantt chart built for top level managers
Move one operation and every downstream step re-plans
Every operation on every machine, on one board. Drag an operation to a different resource or a different hour and the schedule rebuilds instantly against finite capacity, so every downstream operation moves with it. You are planning, not chasing the consequences of planning.
Drag and drop planning board with instant finite capacity rebalancing
Know exactly where your capacity actually is
Utilization, assigned load, backlog and genuinely free capacity, broken out by shift, by work center, and across any date range you pick. This is the number you want in front of you before you promise a delivery date, quote overtime, or sign off on buying another machine.
Utilization, backlog and free capacity by shift, work center and date range
Ask what it would take, before you promise it
Run the plant again in memory with the mathematical solver. Open the weekend on one machine, run the day longer, add or remove a machine, or send an operation out to a vendor, plant-wide or for one job, then compare the result against the plan you are running now. Experiments run in memory: nothing is saved until you press Accept, completed work is never touched, and the answer is never worse than your current plan.
Mathematical solver and what-if variants, run in memory, plant-wide or per job
Charge the real changeover, not a flat average
Setup time depends on what the machine just finished. In a paint booth, white to black is fast and black to white is slow. Configure the from-to changeover matrix once at family level, override the individual products that behave differently, and every schedule after that charges the true changeover instead of one averaged number that is wrong in both directions.
Sequence dependent setup matrix with setup families and per-product overrides
See these six screens run on your own jobs
Bring one week of real work: your products, your machines, your shifts. We will build the routings, run the schedule, and show you the answer against your own numbers rather than a demo dataset.
A scheduling engine that models how your shop really runs
Every capability below is a documented part of the product, not a roadmap slide.
Finite capacity, forward and backward
Schedule forward from a start date or backward (just-in-time) from a due date, against real shift calendars, holidays, downtime, and per-day capacity overrides. Every order gets dates the shop can actually hit.
Theory of Constraints anchor scheduling
Flag a bottleneck work center and EDGEBIC schedules around it the TOC way: backward to the constraint, forward from it, with protective buffers, so the drum sets the pace instead of wishful dates.
Multi-shift, multi-instance allocation
Jobs span shifts and days automatically. Work centers with multiple machines allocate across instances with load balancing, one-job-per-day rules, or dedicated-instance behavior per work center.
Parallel and alternate work centers
Split a batch across independent parallel machines, mirror synchronized multi-spindle operations, or let the scheduler fall back to true alternates when the primary is full, with per-alternate speed factors.
Work center groups (machine pools)
Bind a routing step to a named pool like MILLING and let the engine pick the best member at schedule time by earliest completion, primary-first, or earliest start, and re-shop the pool on every reschedule.
Sequence-dependent setup matrix
Model changeover times that depend on what ran before: white-to-black paint is not black-to-white. Setup families keep the matrix manageable, and the optimizer sequences to cut total changeover hours.
Lot streaming and transfer batches
Overlap operations with piece-count transfer batches on discrete work or start-to-start lags on flow lines, so downstream steps begin before upstream batches finish.
Operators, skills, and certifications
Schedule the people constraint, not just machines: skills with expiry dates, weekly shift rosters, time off, and per-step skill requirements. Jobs wait for qualified operators instead of pretending they exist.
From quoting to the shop floor, in one application
What used to take RMDB plus EDGEBI plus spreadsheets now lives in a single install.
Graphical routing designer
Build every routing as a drag-and-drop flow chart: steps are nodes, sequence arrows are connectors, with sub-assemblies, annotations, and product images on the canvas. The way your factory actually flows is the way you draw it.
Two-layer schedule optimizer
Layer one evaluates dozens of complete schedules and returns the best, guaranteed never worse than your baseline. Layer two uses Google OR-Tools CP-SAT mathematical optimization and reports a proven optimality gap. You review a side-by-side comparison and accept or discard; nothing changes without you.
Interactive Gantt and Job View
Planned versus actual timelines, drag-and-drop rescheduling with safety prompts, color and label rules you control, and layouts that remember how each planner works.
Shop-floor kiosk
A dedicated touch app for operators: start work, count pieces, pause with a reason, complete. Actual hours and dates flow straight into the schedule without a planner retyping anything.
Reschedules that respect reality
Completed and in-progress work is preserved exactly. Reschedules move only what has not happened yet, resuming from where the shop actually is, not where the plan hoped it would be.
Quoting and what-if scenarios
Simulate a prospective order against current finite capacity to get a realistic promise date and cost before you commit. Compare scenarios side by side: extra shift, skipped step, boosted capacity.
Reports, dashboards, and diagnostics
Earned value (SPI/CPI), OEE, utilization, late jobs, on-time delivery, and an anomaly checker that flags schedule problems with an explanation for every column, so planners and auditors get the same answer.
ERP integration through import masks
Bring items, work centers, routings, sales orders, and actuals in from Excel, CSV, or database sources; push schedules and dates back out. The proven approach behind 35 years of ERP integrations. See the integration guide for JobBOSS, Epicor, and Fourth Shift specifics.
Built on results, not promises
EDGEBIC inherits the track record of the User Solutions product line it succeeds:
- GE Railcar Services: on-time shipping tripled from 30% to over 90%.
- USS Nimitz (US Navy): 26,000+ preventive maintenance tasks on a 2-year scheduling horizon.
- Cummins Engine: finite capacity scheduling across 33 manufacturing locations.
- BAE Systems: replaced their ERP scheduling module with User Solutions scheduling.
- Plastilite Corporation: complete Fourth Shift ERP integration delivered in 5 days.
Where EDGEBIC goes further
- A schedule optimizer with a mathematical layer (Google OR-Tools CP-SAT) that reports how close each schedule is to proven optimal.
- Labor as a first-class constraint: skills, certifications with expiry, rosters, and time off.
- Sequence-dependent setup matrices with families, so changeover reality shapes the sequence.
- Machine pools (work center groups) that re-shop every reschedule for the best available member.
- A shop-floor kiosk feeding actuals straight into reschedules that never disturb completed work.