MATERIAL HANDLING ACADEMY

Part VIII. Lesson 34. Commissioning and Acceptance.

DRIVING QUESTION How do we prove it works, and who keeps it running after we leave?
PART VIII | LESSON 34: COMMISSIONING AND ACCEPTANCE
Session A · Acceptance

The Day It Has to Prove It

Every part of this program was preparation. Commissioning is where the bill comes due. The quality of the system gets tested twice, in two different places, against two different owners. Once at our shop before it ships, on our terms: the factory acceptance test. Once on the customer's floor, on the customer's terms, under real load: the site acceptance test.

Neither one is a formality. The first session proves the system. The second designs what keeps it running after we drive away.

PART VIII | LESSON 34: COMMISSIONING AND ACCEPTANCE
Acceptance to service pipeline: gate one is the FAT at our firm over a factory icon, we run it and the scripts exercise every path. An arrow labeled ship carries the system to gate two, the SAT on the customer floor over a building icon, drawn in gold, customer criteria and sustained rate under real load, where the customer accepts. Three stations continue: punch list, customer training, go-live. The line then opens into a navy service-model band with four chips: SLA, warranty boundary, remote-diagnostics owner, and spares by criticality tied to Lesson 26 plus O and M docs.
Two gates, two owners. We prove it at the FAT. The customer accepts it at the SAT. Then the service model keeps it running.
PART VIII | LESSON 34: COMMISSIONING AND ACCEPTANCE

Two Tests, Two Owners

FAT

We own it · at our shop

Test scripts exercise the system end to end: every routing decision, every handshake, every exception path. You write the script that makes the response not come back in time, on purpose, and watch what the system does. Catch it before it ships.

SAT

Customer owns the criteria · on their floor

Stated up front, in numbers, about sustained performance rather than one good run. The system holds the design target across a real run under real load. The WMS handshake gets confirmed at real volume, not on the bench. Then customer sign-off.

PART VIII | LESSON 34: COMMISSIONING AND ACCEPTANCE
WHYAcceptance is where the engineering is proven or exposed. A system accepted on a sustained run against the design target holds up on a bad day. A system waved through on one good minute is a field problem waiting for the next peak.
WHENThe FAT before the system ships, at the firm. The SAT on the customer's floor, against the customer's criteria, under real load.
WHEREThe FAT at our shop, on our test scripts. The SAT on site, on the customer's acceptance criteria.
NOT WHENNot one good minute. Not a bench test standing in for real load. And not the customer defining our FAT or our firm defining their SAT criteria. We own the FAT. The customer owns what it takes to accept the system.
FAILURE IF IGNOREDYou accept on a clean two-minute demo, the real wave release compresses volume the next week, and the system that passed cannot hold rate when it counts. Now it's a warranty fight instead of a punch-list item.
PART VIII | LESSON 34: COMMISSIONING AND ACCEPTANCE
FIELD INSIGHT | MICHAEL COLLINS

A system that makes rate for one minute isn't a system that makes rate. I have watched a machine sail through a demo on a slow afternoon and then choke the first time a truck showed up three hours late and the volume all hit at once. The stated rate is the target. The real constraint is the bad day, the peak before a holiday, the wave that stacks up because something upstream slipped. So when we accept a system, we prove it against the design target sustained, under real load, not on a slow minute of a quiet shift.

Michael Collins
PART VIII | LESSON 34: COMMISSIONING AND ACCEPTANCE
COMMON MISTAKE

Calling one good run a passed test. Rate validation is statistical and sustained, not a single clean minute you happened to catch. If the system can't hold the design target across a real run under real load, it hasn't been proven, it's been demonstrated on a good day. Those are different, and the customer finds out which one you gave them at the next peak.

PART VIII | LESSON 34: COMMISSIONING AND ACCEPTANCE
Session B · The Service Model
THINK LIKE THE OPERATOR

It's 2 a.m. The system just stopped and you're the only maintenance person in the building. What do you need on the shelf, in the documentation, and on the phone to get it running again before the morning wave? Design the service model from that moment backward, not from a template forward.

PART VIII | LESSON 34: COMMISSIONING AND ACCEPTANCE

Who Keeps It Running

A system doesn't end at go-live. Someone maintains it for years, and the service model is the design deliverable that decides whether they can.

SLA

Designed to the customer's actual maintenance capability, not a generic template.

Warranty boundary

Stated cleanly so it isn't argued after a failure instead of before one.

Remote-diagnostics owner

Who can reach the system to diagnose it. Assigned here as a service decision; the network is L21.

Spares + O and M

Spares by criticality tied to L26, O and M docs, and a walkthrough of every serviceable component.

PART VIII | LESSON 34: COMMISSIONING AND ACCEPTANCE

Riverside

RIVERSIDE PROJECT

Riverside's SLA and SAT expectations drive the commissioning plan, and our firm runs the FAT. Write the FAT scripts to exercise the scan-to-WMS-to-divert handshake and, deliberately, the exception path when the WMS doesn't answer inside the one-second window Ray confirmed.

The SAT criteria are Riverside's, stated as numbers: sustained 20 CPM against the design target under real wave-release load, the misdirect rate proven down from the roughly three percent Dana described, and the confirmed one-second latency proven under peak load. Then the service model, designed to what Michael's team of one can actually do at 2 a.m.

Next: I finished the program. Am I ready to run one alone?