The definitive guide to buying automation
Original article date: September 1997
I’ve always liked helpful guides. So here, for the first time, from a machinery designer, is the definitive guide to buying automation.
1. Show the supplier who’s boss. Refuse to discuss the project over the phone so that they have to travel the length of the country to find out what you want isn’t the sort of thing they do.
2. Never do a justification calculation in advance. Leave it to when the guy is on your site until you figure out that vision-guided robots in a clean room cannot payback a quarter of an operator four days a week.
3. Jazz up the spec. If you need 5 units per minute, round it up to 10. It raises the game a bit and leaves you with some in hand. Later, when you decide the price is too high, you can always change your mind.
4. Never actually write down your requirements in one place. A scattered series of faxes and phonecalls are far more fun and should stop the supplier ever really getting an upper hand.
5. Try and avoid the issue of an acceptance test. If you keep saying “we’ll know when it’s finished”, then you can guarantee hours of entertainment further down the line as people argue about what on earth the machine was supposed to do.
6. Never tell the supplier the true timescale. If you want a figure in next year’s budget, then swear blind that the order could be placed next week. Get it off your desk more quickly.
7. Supply the best product you have for their development work. Only bring out the really representative parts (the ones with the wildly varying dimensions) on the day of the signoff trials. That means the parts you supply at first should be either moulded parts all from the same impression of the tool; or with any other process, all parts from the same batch; or with strip and roll fed material, from an entirely different supplier.
8. Change who’s responsible at your end halfway through the contract. Appoint a recent recruit and cunningly change the spec at the same time. It’ll be weeks before they spot that one!
9. Make them hurry, right up till delivery day, then tell them suddenly that you aren’t ready to receive it yet. Keep ‘em keen!
10. Refuse to make operators available for training. When the machine is due, try to send the guy who will have to maintain it (and all the future operators) on a long course which starts on the day the truck pulls in.
11. Burn or eat all the manuals and troubleshooting guides the moment the installation team leave. Sack anyone who attempts to read them.
12. Crank it up to 20% faster than specified operating speed at the first opportunity to see what breaks.
13. Make sure you get a home phone number. Only try ambitious running conditions or preposterous throughputs when the supplier’s tech support guy is asleep, and when an operator known to his friends as “animal” is on your nightshift against his wishes.
September 1997