Summary
Once you've reviewed and saved your production numbers, you can plan benches - deciding what each bench makes during a production, who's working it, and when it runs. The quickest way is to let Edify prefill the benches for you, then fine-tune.
You plan benches from the Plan benches page, reached from the Benches button on the Production page. The page has three tabs: Bench Assignment, Bench Summary and Ingredient Summary.
💡 Bench planning is done per production. Use the production dropdown at the top left (Production 1, Production 2, …) to choose which one you're planning.
Prefilling benches
Prefilling creates the benches and distributes the day's planned recipes across them for you, following your bench rules.
On the Production page for the day, select Benches to open the Plan benches page.
On the Bench Assignment tab, choose the production from the dropdown at the top left.
Select Prefill benches.
Set the Number of benches - this defaults to the site's default number, but you can change it.
Select Prefill.
Your recipes are allocated across the benches, and Benches are ready appears once the plan is complete.
💡 You can drag and drop a recipe using the handle on its row to reorder it or move it to another bench.
Seeing how the allocator decided
Select Plan reasoning to open Allocation reasoning, which explains how the day's production was distributed - for example, how many items went to each bench, the method used to balance them, and how even the final split is.
Assigning a team member
Each bench has an Assigned to dropdown - choose the person working that bench. For someone without an Edify account, type their name and set it manually. You can change who's assigned at any time.
Editing what a bench makes
To adjust a prefilled bench, select Edit items on it. The Edit bench panel opens with two sides: Unassigned products and the bench's current recipes.
Adjust a recipe's quantity with the – and + steppers.
Select × to remove a recipe from the bench - it moves to Unassigned products, ready to reassign elsewhere.
Add an unassigned recipe to the bench from the Unassigned products side.
Select Save when you're done. The bench header shows a running count of recipes, items and time as you work.
Adding and deleting benches
Select + Add bench to create a new, empty bench. To remove a bench, select the bin icon on it - any recipes it held become unassigned. Delete benches clears all benches for the production.
Bench timings
Each bench shows how long its work will take:
Row / field | Explainer |
Time (per recipe) | How long it takes to make the assigned quantity of that recipe, based on its recipe-level preparation time. |
Production time | The combined quantity and time for all recipes on the bench. |
Cleaning | A fixed time allowance for cleaning and duties. |
Total time | The overall time required, in bold. |
Start / End | The bench's time window, auto-populated from the site's production schedules. |
Remaining | How much spare time is left in the window. |
To change a bench's window, select into its Start or End box, choose the new time and confirm.
⚠️ If the work assigned to a bench needs more time than its window allows, the Remaining time shows as a negative number in red — move some recipes to another bench or widen the window.
Bench Summary
Based on the recipes and quantities allocated to each bench, the Bench Summary tab shows everything a bench has to produce and the ingredient quantities it needs. It's available once the production's benches have been set.
Use the dropdowns to choose the production and bench you want to view. Expand any recipe to see its ingredient breakdown, and read the bench's totals at the bottom.
To print a copy, select Download and choose whether to download just the selected bench or all benches - the file downloads as a PDF ready to print.
💡 For a digital, work-along version of the summary, use the Stepper from the Plan production page - it steps through each recipe on the bench one at a time, alongside the How-to cards.
Ingredient Summary
The Ingredient Summary tab is a consolidated list of every ingredient and quantity needed for everything planned for the selected production. Use the dropdown to choose the production, and search with Filter ingredients.
Tick Hide sub-recipes to leave out intermediate recipes, and use the Include unassigned toggle to include ingredients for batches not yet assigned to a bench. Filter the Tags column to pick out products that need to be pre-prepared the day before.
Select Download to save the list as a PDF for printing.