Lead Time and Production Capacity Planning for Equipment Orders

1. The stages of an order

A line order runs in stages: specification and order, the production slot, the build, the FAT, shipment, delivery, installation and commissioning. Each stage has a duration and an owner, and the sum is the project's timeline. The buyer who treats the order as a project — with a schedule, owners and milestones — is the buyer who commissions on time; the buyer who treats it as a purchase learns the timeline at the end.

The stages are the contract's skeleton: each payment is tied to a stage, and each stage has a date or a trigger.

2. The production slot

The production slot is the supplier's place in the order book — and it is the stage most affected by when you order, not by the machine. A supplier with a busy book slots your line weeks or months out; booking early for a hard commissioning date is the difference between hitting the season and missing it. Ask for the current slot availability with the proposal.

The slot is reserved with the order — the deposit holds the place, and the contract names the slot window.

3. The build

The build is the machine's manufacturing time — set by the line's scope, the components' lead times and the supplier's load. It dominates the timeline, and it is where the engineering reviews and the approvals happen: the layout, the drawings and the spec confirmations are all due during the build, not after it. Changes during the build move the date — the spec is frozen at order.

Confirm the drawing and approval schedule with the supplier at order — the milestones during the build are the buyer's checkpoints.

4. FAT and shipment

Factory acceptance testing runs the line — or the line in modules — at the factory before shipment: the output test on your bottle, the checks and the acceptance report. FAT is a scheduled checkpoint, not a formality — problems found here are fixed at the factory, where engineers and parts are. After FAT, the shipment window starts, and the shipping stage follows the route and the season.

Book the FAT date with the supplier and attend it, in person or by video with a checklist — it is the last point where the fix is cheap.

5. Shipping and installation

Shipping follows the route (sea, rail or truck) and the season (winter and monsoon are real variables), and installation follows the site's readiness. The site readiness — hall, utilities, labour — is the buyer's stage, and it is the most common cause of slippage after the machine ships. The schedule should carry buffer between arrival and commissioning, and the contract names the responsible party for each stage.

Installation is one to two weeks with a technician, ending in the acceptance run — and the acceptance is the project's end, defined in the contract.

6. The capacity plan

The capacity plan comes before the order: the line's scale is set by year-one sales, the shift pattern and the growth path — not by ambition. A line sized to year-one demand runs at capacity and pays back; a line sized to year-five dreams runs idle and burns capital. The plan sets the output, which sets the build and the price — and it is the first document the schedule is built around.

The capacity plan also sets the utilities, the hall and the warehouse — the schedule follows the plan, and the plan follows the market.

7. Building the schedule

Work backwards from the commissioning date: installation (one to two weeks), shipping (route and season), FAT (a checkpoint, not a buffer), build (the long pole), and the slot (booked at order). Add buffer for the unknowns — the border, the port and the site — and sign the contract with the dates and a penalty on the delivery stage. The plan is the contract; the contract is the plan.

The same schedule logic applies to a filling machine, a combiblock or a complete line — the machine changes, the project discipline does not.

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