Budgeting for a detailed Factory Acceptance Test is an investment in your project’s success. If you’ve ever had trouble convincing whoever makes and approves the capital equipment budgets in your organization to invest in a thorough FAT, read on…
Packaging World recently featured an article “Successful FATs Improve Equipment Start-Ups” by Jim Chrzan. While his recommendations may add some cost, and the payback may be hard to quantify, your system will start up faster and achieve higher efficiencies when you invest in a detailed FAT. Below I’ll describe a few additional hot buttons that I am particularly adamant about when I work with my clients.
Preparing the Plan
First, I insist on a detailed test plan. To me, this is a ‘no brainer’. I can’t imagine approaching an FAT any other way. In the life sciences industry, the FAT Plan is extremely detailed. In addition to the performance runs, it often includes verification of every wire, sensor, and HMI screen. It is reviewed and approved ahead of time. Such an approach is costly but it reduces risk down the road; an imperative in that world. In a less regulated environment, you still need a written plan including drawings and lists to be verified.
While we’re on the subject, there are two schools of thought as to who should be responsible for writing the FAT Plan; customer or vendor. With proper planning, either approach can work. Some are of the opinion that having the vendor write the FAT Plan is a little like having the fox guard the hen house; that the vendor’s incentive is to put together a plan that is less rigorous to ensure the equipment passes. To make either approach work, the vendor needs to be totally in tune with the level of testing that will need to be performed.
I’ve helped clients create a ‘sanitized’ FAT Plan to demonstrate the level of detail expected. We include this as an attachment to all Requests for Proposal which, in turn, helps to avoid the need for conversations about whether the vendor budgeted enough resources on their end when they quoted the project.
The advantage of having the vendor prepare the plan is that it eliminates the need to ‘reverse engineer’ the system to write the plan. When the customer writes the FAT Plan, it is necessary to have final versions of drawings and documentation ahead of time in order to do the aforementioned ‘reverse engineering’. This can lead to longer time lines waiting for documentation to be finalized.
Either way, it is incumbent on the customer to thoroughly review and approve the FAT Plan ahead of time. In addition, the better (and smarter) vendors will use the document to pre-execute the FAT prior to the customer’s arrival.
Assembling the Team
I am a huge proponent of engaging the operators and technicians. Get your people involved early. Have them actively participate in the FAT. Insist that your people set up and operate the machine with vendor oversight. Have them navigate their way through the HMI screens and understand how to respond to alarm conditions. Also, this is a great opportunity to start drafting your operating procedures. If the vendor will accommodate the participation of lead operators and maintenance personnel during debug, do it!
Better yet, provide for this activity in the purchase agreement. It is often difficult to get management to approve the costs associated with this level of participation (e.g., travel, wages, time away from ongoing production), but it is well worth the investment. Your people will be more familiar with the equipment, take ownership in it, and be better equipped to troubleshoot it without external support.
Executing the Plan
Nothing does more to set the wrong tone than arriving at the vendor’s facility without a plan for executing the FAT. I create and distribute a matrix showing what parts of the plan will be executed hour-by-hour during the FAT and by whom. I share it with the vendor and revise it based on their input. It is then distributed to all concerned.
For each section, a customer operator or technician is identified for the hands-on work. That person is paired with a vendor technician to familiarize them with the exact location of components and how to execute test scripts. Having a third person, often an engineer or supervisor, read off the test scripts and record the results as an added bonus. This approach demonstrates to the vendor the importance given to the FAT process.
The Big Picture
Keep in mind the purpose of the FAT. The goal when you leave is to have confidence that the system will perform in your facility. This is a team effort. It is in everybody’s interest to have a successful FAT. It is more important that the system starts up with as few hiccups as possible. Focus on issues that are better solved at the factory than on your floor. It is much, much easier to modify software than machine parts in the field.
Speaking of parts, insist that the complete set of spare parts that you ordered with the machine will ship with it. Inventory them during FAT. It is a given that some part will fail or get damaged during start-up and you want a reasonable chance of avoiding extended down time waiting for the part to arrive.
This article brings back some vivid memories…both good and bad. What has been your experience?
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