Why custom equipment needs a written package
A standard product comes off a catalogue: the specification, the options and the service terms are already written down and every buyer gets the same thing. Non-standard automation equipment is the opposite. It is designed around your product, your process, your takt time and the floor space you actually have, so nothing about it is transferable to another factory without documentation. If the machine was designed for your part geometry and your line layout, the only way your maintenance team can support it five years from now is if the reasoning behind the design is captured somewhere they can read.
The practical test is simple. When the machine stops at 2 a.m., can the on-shift technician find the circuit it is running through, the sensor that guards that motion and the spare part number that belongs to it, without calling the supplier? When a new supplier has to modify the station, can they work from your drawings instead of a site visit? Answering those two questions is what the package exists for.
Process and design documents
Start with the material that explains what the machine was built to do and how it is built. Ask the builder to hand these over as editable source files, not only locked PDFs, because you will need them the day someone wants to change a fixture or add a station.
- Process analysis and the automation feasibility assessment, including which stations were automated and which were deliberately left manual.
- The approved automation proposal and equipment layout, with the boundary between your existing line and the new equipment marked clearly.
- 3D structural model and 2D machining drawings for every fabricated and machined part, plus fixture and jig drawings.
- The bill of materials with manufacturer, model and ordering code for purchased components: drives, motors, sensors, vision parts, cylinders, rails, PLC modules and safety devices.
- Pneumatics and vacuum circuit diagrams, and the calibration or setting records for any fixture, press or alignment feature that was tuned during commissioning.
Electrical and control files
This is the part most frequently delivered as a photograph of an open cabinet, and it is the part that costs the most to recover later. The handover should include the electrical schematics for the control cabinet and the machine body, the terminal and I/O schedule, the cable list with routing, the panel layout and the bill of materials for the cabinet. On the software side you want the PLC program and the HMI project in their editable original formats, the vision or measurement software project, parameter backups for every servo drive and variable-frequency drive, recipe and product-data definitions, the alarm list with a plain-language description of each fault, and the password list.
Two clauses are worth insisting on in the purchase order. First, source files rather than read-only runtime, so a future integrator can modify the logic without reverse engineering it. Second, a version record: the program running on the machine at acceptance must match a named, dated file in the package. If the machine was debugged on site, the delivered program has to be the one that was accepted on site, not the one from the factory test bench.
Acceptance evidence and test records
Factory acceptance and on-site acceptance should each have a signed report attached to the package, together with the test methods behind them: the cycle and takt measurement, the functional checks, the stability run, the safety and interlock tests, and the abnormal-condition tests such as air-loss, power-loss recovery and sensor fault injection. Record the quality criteria that were used, for example dimensional or functional check results, together with how the machine was set up when those results were obtained, because the same machine tuned differently will not repeat the same numbers.
The report should also close the loop on what did not pass. A list of outstanding items, agreed remedies and a responsible party is a normal part of a custom project; a package that pretends everything passed on the first pass tells you nothing about the machine you bought.
Spares, consumables and maintenance data
Ask for a recommended spare-parts list split into two tiers: what you should keep on site, and what you can order later because lead time allows it. Wear items belong on the first tier, covering seals, suction cups, nozzles, heater elements, gaskets, filters, brushes, timing belts and probe tips, along with the part number, the quantity per change, the expected replacement interval and whether the supplier stocks it or you have to make it. Custom-machined parts with a long lead time belong there too, since re-drawing them from a worn sample is exactly the delay the drawings in your package were meant to avoid.
The maintenance documentation should cover lubrication points and intervals, the daily and weekly check lists, the safe isolation procedure for the machine, how to open a guarded area without defeating a safety function, alignment checks for rails and fixtures, and the cleaning routine. If the station involves steam, hot water or chemical dosing, the cleaning circuit, tank materials and the protection functions for low water, leakage and over-temperature should be documented the same way as the motion systems, since those are the items an operator can silently disable.
Training, operating documents and the people
Delivery should include operator instructions and maintenance instructions in the language your team reads, written for the machine as installed, plus the training records that show who was trained on what. A short fault-finding guide organised by alarm code is more useful in the middle of the night than a general manual. Alongside the documents, capture the human contacts: the engineer who commissioned the machine, the support channel and response expectation, and the escalation route. Where a builder provides integrated engineering team services for a project, the point of contact changes as the project moves from design to commissioning, so record who owns what after handover instead of assuming one name covers everything.
Commercial terms and after-sales
The final section of the package is contractual. It should state the warranty start date and what it covers, which items are consumables excluded from warranty, response time and whether support is remote, by mail or on site, spare-parts supply terms and for how many years the builder commits to them, and access to the machine's software for the remainder of its service life. Add the agreed process for change requests, with a written quote before any modification, and the responsibility split for parts made by you versus parts made by the builder. If any purchased component has its own warranty from the original manufacturer, the package should carry those certificates and serial numbers too.
Where it belongs in the project schedule
Do not raise the package at the factory acceptance test. Agree the document list in the order, list it as a deliverable against each milestone, and review an incomplete draft when you sign off the design so wrong drawings are corrected before they are copied into the final file set. A workable sequence looks like this: the document list is fixed in the purchase order; design drawings are reviewed at design freeze; the bill of materials and spare-parts recommendation arrive with the build; the as-built file set, test reports and training records are complete before the balance payment; and the package is checked line by line at on-site acceptance, not after it. Treating the package as a payment gate is the most effective way to get a complete one.
Five gaps that show up later
In practice the same few omissions repeat. Read-only PLC programs with no source. Drawings that were never updated after on-site changes, so the as-built machine matches nothing on paper. A bill of materials without manufacturer part numbers, which makes a purchased sensor impossible to reorder. No record of fixture settings, so a rebuilt fixture no longer repeats the accepted quality results. And a spare-parts list nobody reviewed, which the buyer discovers only when the machine waits weeks for one seal. Each of these is cheap to prevent at the review stage and expensive to reconstruct during downtime.
Before you sign the order
If your line is being built from a manual process rather than replacing an existing machine, ask the supplier to walk you through the same list during the feasibility stage. A builder that develops product development and automation projects from process analysis through on-site delivery will normally be able to show you a sample handover index for a comparable station, and that index tells you more about their discipline than any capability claim. Send us your process description, part drawings and capacity target, and we will mark which documents you should require at each milestone before you commit to the build.
