Better planning could help you get out of the “doing whatever it takes to make it work” mode. Wouldn’t that be nice?

It’s an all-too-familiar scenario.A month ago, your head engineer purchased and installed a new widget press for the plant that you maintain. It’s the best in the business, they claim, capable of forming 75 widgets per minute (wpm) with virtually no downtime or maintenance required. Hey, it says so right there in the big, glossy brochure. So, how come this press is only packing 50 wpm in the fifth week of commissioning, you’re spending a fortune to expedite replacement parts from Germany, and you’re keeping the vendor on speed-dial, demanding assembly drawings for this thing on a daily basis?

In the best of these cases, the project leader will work with you and the vendor to get this thing ramped up to deliver what was originally required. In far too many cases, though, the project leader is off to the next project or projects and simply does not have the time to help you get things going. They “sign off ” the project as delivered, and now the maintenance department has to scramble, revise and modify, chase vendors, make excuses, curse, and work the usual miracles to please the operations crowd. Honestly, how many of us have been in this situation too many times? And expect to be in

Typically, there are many parties involved in bringing a new manufacturing process on-line. Let’s look at a few broad groups, namely operations, maintenance, engineering and the vendors. A summary of their needs may look like Table I.

Now, in a well-run project, these parties will all come together to discuss the scope and deliverables of the project. At some point quotations will be requested, and the team may review proposals. Once a proposal is selected, the dialogue tends to shift to delivery and installation details. This is actually a very critical point in the project, at which the maintenance and operations leaders need to make sure that the project is really set up for success. That sounds easy, yet it’s not often done. How many of us have asked the question, “What can I do to make sure I’ll really get what I need?”

Toward a better way
The answer to the question is not simple. You can, however, significantly diminish this nightmare scenario through the use of seven basic steps. In this article we’ll look at the basic requirements for purchasing industrial equipment, from start to finish. These requirements are quite familiar to you, yet we’re going to approach them in a new way, so that we can create a set of guidelines.

These will be guidelines that you...(Read whole article)