Commissioning, Change, Maintenance & Governance

Acceptance tests

Factory acceptance (FAT) happens at the integrator’s shop before shipping. Bring real cases from both cardboard suppliers, every pallet pattern, and two operators. Run the requirements list: rate, mis-picks over a few thousand cases, a changeover timed by your operator, a jam cleared from outside the fence. Try the abnormal cases: a crushed case, an empty pallet station, power off mid-pallet. Write a punch list of everything that fails.

Site acceptance (SAT) happens after installation, in production: a multi-shift run at real rate with the plant’s people running it. The robot cell’s safety functions get validated in place, every gate, light curtain, and stop tested and recorded, as the standards for robot applications require ^{1 2}.

Ramp-up

The first weeks find the problems the tests didn’t. Plan for it:

• A daily 15-minute review at the cell: every stoppage in the last 24 hours, its cause, and who owns the fix.
• A simple log by cause (mis-picks, infeed jams, pallet station faults), so the biggest category gets fixed first.
• The integrator on call, with a response time in the contract.
• Production targets that ramp up over a few weeks rather than full rate on day one.

Keeping it running

A preventive maintenance list, built from the suppliers’ manuals and what ramp-up taught:

Keep spare vacuum cups, a spare gripper, fuses, and a backup of every program on hand. Back up the robot and PLC programs after every approved change.

Management of change

Over time, someone will want to change something: a new case size, a faster speed to catch up on orders, a sensor that “keeps nuisance-tripping.” Every change goes through management of change: a written request, a review of what it affects (cycle, quality, and especially safety: faster motion means longer stopping distance), approval, testing, and updated programs, drawings, and procedures. NIST’s OT security guide treats change control on control systems as basic practice ³.

A bypassed light curtain or a jumpered gate switch is the classic failure. If a safety device trips too often, the fix is to find out why, not to defeat it.

Who owns it

When the integrator leaves, name an owner for each piece: the robot programs and patterns, the PLC, the safety validation records, backups and passwords, spare parts, the maintenance schedule, and the monthly performance review. Without names, the cell slowly becomes a machine nobody understands. And keep the operators in the loop: the people who run it every day are the first to see what’s starting to go wrong, which is the point MIT’s task force makes about involving workers in how technology is used ⁴.

Try it

Write the FAT test list (at least ten tests, including five abnormal cases) and the monthly maintenance list for the concept you developed in this course.