Make 4 key onsite visits to ensure your machine vendor meets all your expectations
The decision to add a new machine to your manufacturing floor isn’t one you enter into lightly. It represents a considerable capital expense and the potential to spur your company’s future innovation. Its a big decision and you want to make sure you get it right.
You’ve done your homework, researched your options and found the perfect partner capable of building a packaging machine to match your company’s needs. Once you’ve made the decision to move forward with a machine vendor, there are a few more opportunities you should participate in to ensure a successful project.
We welcome customers to visit our facility at any point during a project, but we’ve identified 4 key times where your presence onsite ensures that we proactively meet all your expectations.
Project Kick-Off Meeting: the formal project intro and handoff to MGS Project Management and Engineering. Project details, specs, milestones, and budget are reviewed.
- Requested Customer Attendees: Project stakeholders, decision-makers
- MGS Attendees: Product Handling or Secondary Packaging sales team, project management, engineering.
Design Review: Once a majority of the engineering has been completed on your project, we host a design review meeting to go over the 3D modeling of your machine. All design features, specs, and functionality are discussed to get your sign off to finalize engineering and move to production.
- Requested Customer Attendees: Project stakeholders, decision-makers
- MGS Attendees: project management, controls, and mechanical engineering.
As-Built: With much of your machine assembly completed, you will be invited for an As-Built meeting. This visit is more than just your initial opportunity to see the machine in action. It’s also a chance for the team you bring to interact with our team and develop relationships that will benefit both companies. These visits are all about collaboration, and the bonds you make during this trip will last for the life of your machine.
This is a hands-on meeting. During this visit, we will demonstrate machine design and functionality. Your team will have the opportunity to operate the machine – this is a great opportunity for them to offer insight into any final adjustments that need to be made. Making these adjustments on our floor, prior to FAT and shipment, ensure that your machine is built perfectly for you as efficiently as possible.
- Requested Customer Attendees: Project stakeholders, decision-makers, machine operators, safety, maintenance, and quality teams.
- MGS Attendees: project management, controls, and mechanical engineering, operations management and assembly technicians.
FAT: The Factory Acceptance Test is a cumulation of the efforts of both the customer and our team. In preparation for FAT, we complete any adjustments called out in the As-Built meeting, finalize debugging and perform several internal pre-FAT runs.
At MGS, your FAT will be efficient and streamlined - come to evaluate your equipment and verify that it is performing in accordance with design specifications. It's not to say that adjustments cannot be made at this time, but we feel that collaborating and communicating with our customers throughout the project ensures a very simple and successful FAT.
The FAT is also a time for your team to receive training, ask questions, and give final sign off once completely satisfied with the performance of the machine.
- Requested Customer Attendees: Project stakeholders, decision-makers, machine operators, safety, maintenance, and quality teams.
- MGS Attendees: project management, controls, and mechanical engineering, operations management and assembly technicians.