In this guide 6 sections
Have the vendor open one of your finished cells and show the bill of materials, safety file, risk assessment, milestone sign-offs and handover pack. Your own project is the test. Late changes, substituted parts and missing sign-offs expose a weak system far faster than any prepared sample can, so insist on real data.
Can it hold a cell bill of materials with revisions?
A cell never has one parts list. It holds an arm, a controller, a gripper, guarding, a PLC, fieldbus cables, a camera and a dozen small items bought late in the build. Have the vendor open one of your finished cells, where the bill should appear as it stood at quote, at release and at build. Mark every line as quoted, ordered, received or fitted, so the director sees at a glance how much of a cell exists only on paper.
Then change the gripper. The change should reach purchasing, the drawing list and the quote variance in one move, with no step where someone retypes a part number. That is where errors enter.
Substitutions need the same care. A swapped safety relay is a normal event on site, and the record must name the engineer who signed off the swap and the date of the change.
- Bill of materials by cell and by revision
- Customer supplied items kept apart from bought items
- Alternate parts with approver and date
- Robots and grippers tracked by serial number
Where does the safety documentation live?
Each cell needs a safety file. The file holds guarding drawings, the emergency stop circuit, safety relay settings, light curtain data sheets and the declaration that goes with the machine. Ask how these documents attach to the cell itself rather than to a loose folder on a shared drive that anyone in the office can rename or move.
When a drawing is revised after the file was issued, a good system flags the safety file as out of date, and a weak one keeps both versions.
File types matter as well. Your team will upload PDF exports, PLC project archives, robot backups and photos taken at commissioning, and the system must accept them all without complaint. Keep the approval trail brief. A single approval line beats a long email thread that nobody can find six months later, when the customer’s inspector asks for it.
How do risk assessments stay tied to the cell?
A risk assessment is a living record. It lists hazards at each station, the control chosen, the residual risk and the person who signed; when the customer adds a second operator station, the assessment must reopen. An inspector or an insurer will look first for the name and date on each review, so both must be stored with the hazard list.
Make the vendor show that link. Change the layout on a cell and see whether the assessment is flagged for review, who gets the alert, and how fast it arrives.
Ask whether past assessments can be copied into a new quote as a starting point, because reuse saves hours only if the copy keeps its own history. Old text must stay editable.
- Hazard list by station
- Control measure and reference to the drawing
- Residual risk and reviewer
- Review trigger when layout or payload changes
Do payment milestones follow real sign-offs?
Integrators are paid in five steps: order, design release, factory acceptance, site acceptance and a final retention held back until the warranty period ends. Each step should be released by an event such as a signed test sheet, and not by someone who happens to remember to raise an invoice. Cash gets tight when robots, cameras and safety hardware are bought months before the customer pays, so milestone discipline protects your bank balance.
Set up a cell with five milestones. If the site acceptance sheet is missing, the invoice should wait, and the screen should say which document is absent and who holds it.
Variation orders are the next test. The new amount must sit against the right milestone, and the customer’s purchase order number must travel with it onto every invoice and delivery note.
What does the handover pack hold, and who can change it later?
The pack outlives the project. It carries as-built drawings, the PLC and robot program backups, spare parts lists, the safety file, test records and a maintenance schedule. Ask the vendor to generate one from a finished job in front of you, and count the minutes it takes to assemble every drawing, backup and certificate.
Ask who may edit it. Once the pack is sent, changes should create a new issue, not overwrite the old one; your support team will thank you when a customer calls two years later. Pull the PLC program, the robot backup and the network diagram into the same issue, so a service engineer in another city can restore a cell without phoning you.
List your five worst past projects. Ask how each would have looked in this system, then score every answer on a sheet and compare the vendors before you sign anything.
Vendor question sheet
Five blocks cover cell bill of materials, safety file, risk assessment, payment milestones and handover pack, with a row for each question and a column for good answers. Further columns hold the demo seen, a score from one to five and notes, while a total at the foot lets you compare vendors side by side.
Open a blank worksheet to printQuestions owners ask
Should we ask for a demo on our own project?
Yes, with one finished cell. Give the vendor its drawings, parts list and test sheets, because your own data shows how the system copes with late changes and odd parts.
Who should sit in on the vendor demo?
Bring the project engineer, someone from the controls team, the person who raises invoices and whoever writes handover packs to the same session. Each tests a different part of the system and spots gaps that the others would miss, which one person alone cannot do.
Is a generic project tool enough for a robot integrator?
It can cover tasks and dates. It rarely covers cell revisions, safety files and milestone triggers, so test those three before you decide, because they are where integrators lose time.
What should we ask about data when we leave a vendor?
Ask for an export of every record and attached file as plain CSV tables and PDF reports, and ask how long it takes. A clear answer saves a dispute.