Many pilots do not die in integration. Acceptance gets signed; cycles reproduce—but the schedule often never names the arm. Ask if it is “live” and the answer is “it runs.” Ask what night shift defaults to and the room says manual—less hassle. What is missing is rarely torque. It is an administrative seam: capex in digital transformation; accountability on production. Published timelines put arm-only simple pick-place at hours to one day for a first path after delivery, but a full station (EOAT + fixture + I/O + run-off) often at ~2–6 weeks (same order as the integration timeline guide); AMD Machines · TCO treats integration at 30–50% of project cost as normal. If the organization celebrates “first jog” but never defaults capacity to the arm, the pilot stalls in the middle.
“Buy one and try it”—without defining the try, two opposite errors both look reasonable
Without written acceptance bounds, “try” slides too low (one good pick) and too high (month-one manual yield match). Opposite verdicts, same shelf: no graduation rule, no stop rule.
More common: engineering passes, organization does not. EOAT, vision, takt are there; the schedule never marks the station robot-first. Integrator exit switches support. With no internal owner, “run when needed” means manual forever.
The first ninety days after handoff are the line acceptance test
FAT/SAT answer compliance, not shift habit. The exam is pre-peak, short crew, 2 a.m. changeover—without one named owner, friction returns as signed offsets, tuning vs bypass debates, and downtime while spares clear procurement.
Showing automation to visitors is not the sin. Sin is when site selection mainly serves visibility—not the bottleneck. See Why the first station is often the wrong one.
Graduation is not “no faults”
Graduation is earthy: planners still schedule this station without the integrator watching. That takes half a page at charter: takt, yield, changeover, run hours as numbers; named owner and teach rights; manual bypass preserved; expand or stop within thirty days after handoff.
Common questions
We signed acceptance—why is it still not “live”?
Is indefinite manual/robot parallel normal?
Can a second unit save the first?
Who owns the cell after the integrator leaves?
If you already own a cobot that demos but does not ship, pricing a second unit is rarely urgent. Check three things first: can you find the pass document; who may reset at night; if this were the only unit forever, does this location still justify it?
