Are you using the right questions (when you select automation equipment)

Using quoted price, delivery and production rate as the only criteria for choosing vendors, may well be the correct approach for many industrial purchases. However, following this same doctrine when buying automation equipment, such as coil winding and finishing machines, often leads to making selections that later prove not to be the best choice. Because all the written quote packages appear to address the same key issues, does not mean such machines are generic. They are complex products, with hundreds of details being decided primarily by the builder, not machines produced to an established, third party standard or specification. There will assuredly be significant, but not necessarily evident, differences in the offerings by the competing sales persons. Learning to ask the machine builder the right questions, to correctly identify, understand and properly evaluate the differences is the only practical solution for industry. Business cannot justify the US federal government's approach to make every individual purchase generic via an all-inclusive, comprehensive specification, nor can they afford the results of this concept such as $100 hammers and $400 toilet seats. This paper addresses the fundamental questions and issues that should be explored with potential vendors, to help buyers make better informed decisions.