Presenting to a plant head and an engineer in the same meeting

The plant head wants to know what the line will cost, how many shutdown days it needs and when it pays back. The plant's electrical engineer wants to know why you quoted a controller make the plant does not use. Both questions arrive in the first ten minutes, and one deck answers neither well. Prepare two pages. The plant head's page covers the problem in money and downtime, the shutdown, the payment stages and the support afterwards. The engineer's page covers makes, programme handover, spares and training. Send the engineer's page two days ahead.

Why one deck loses this room

The two are answerable for different things. The plant head answers to the owners for output and cost. The engineer answers to the plant head for a line that runs, and for fixing it at two in the morning when it does not. What a plant head is judged on is set out in our note on advertising to plant heads.

There is a second, quieter problem. The engineer may have chosen the system you want to replace, or recommended the last vendor. Your proposal can read as a verdict on that work. An engineer who feels exposed in front of the boss may find a technical reason to say no, and a plant head may defer to the engineer on a technical point. Win the engineer first, in private if you can.

The plant head's page

Keep it to one side of A4, so the plant head can read it in the meeting and carry it to the owners afterwards.

• The problem in the plant's own words, from your site visit, with the plant's figures where it shared them
• What changes in the measure the plant head watches, as a range you can defend, or left out
• Shutdown days needed, and whether they fit a stop the plant has already planned
• Price, with payment stages tied to delivery, factory acceptance and site acceptance
• Support after handover: warranty, a service contract option, and who comes when it stops
• One reference in a similar plant, with an offer of a call

A worked line, with invented figures, shows the register to aim for: "Sorting and packing at the end of kiln 2: two people per shift instead of five, installed inside the planned kiln stop of nine days, payment in three stages of 30, 50 and 20 per cent."

The engineer's page

Send this one two days before the meeting, so the engineer arrives with answers instead of objections.

• Controller, drive and HMI makes, matched to the plant's standard makes, or a stated reason why not
• I/O count and a panel layout summary, with drawings to follow
• Programme handover: source code, passwords and a backup at site acceptance
• Spares, marking the items common with what the plant already stocks
• Training for the engineer's team: who, how many days, and where
• Safety: guarding, interlocks and emergency stops, checked against the norms the plant's own team works to
• What the plant must provide, such as air, power, network points, floor space and foundations

A worked line here, again invented: "Controller: the plant's standard make, as on presses 1 to 4; I/O 96 in, 64 out; source programme and passwords handed over at site acceptance; spares shared with the press line: 6 of 11 items."

Run the meeting in this order

1. Open with the problem, and ask the engineer to correct it. Anything you got wrong about the line is fixed in front of the boss, and the engineer becomes a co-author instead of a critic.
2. Settle the technical page next, briefly. The engineer has read it. Answer questions while the plant head listens, so the make question is closed before money comes up.
3. Then the plant head's page. Price, shutdown, payment and support, in that order.
4. Ask each of them, by name, what would stop the project. The objection you do not hear in the room is the one that kills the order later.
5. Agree the next step and its owner at the plant. A revised quotation, a second site visit or a reference call, with a date.

Imagine an integrator meeting a tile plant in Morbi

Imagine an Ahmedabad integrator presenting an automatic sorting and packing line to a ceramic tile plant in Morbi. The details are illustrative. The integrator's deck ran to twenty slides of past projects and a payback chart. Ten minutes in, the plant's electrical engineer asked why the quotation used a controller make the plant had never bought. Every press and kiln on site ran on another make. The engineer also asked whether the programme would be locked. The integrator said both could be discussed later. The plant head, one of the family partners, said it would be thought about.

The integrator asked for a second meeting. Two days before it, the engineer received a page of their own. It quoted the plant's standard make, listed the spares shared with the press line, and promised the source programme and passwords at site acceptance. The meeting opened with the engineer correcting two details about the packing area. Then the plant head's page showed the shutdown days fitted into the planned kiln maintenance stop, with the payment stages beside them. The plant head asked for a revised quotation, addressed to both by name. The second meeting cost the integrator a month. The plant's family partners met only on the following Sunday, and the revised quotation, which had to be redone around the plant's controller make, went in three weeks after the first meeting. A rival's quotation arrived in the meantime, and the integrator's price stood only because the engineer had already approved its technical page.

When to split the meeting instead

If the plant head can stay only twenty minutes, hand over the one page and book a separate technical session with the engineer. Split it too when the engineer is new and wants to learn the system rather than judge it, because questions come more freely without the boss in the room.

And if the plant has a projects team that writes the specification, meet them before anyone else. The plant head will defer to whatever they have already written.

Split the proposal into two pages

Take the proposal you are about to present and split it into the two pages. If a line fits neither page, it belongs in an appendix or nowhere. Preparing the two pages and the reference material behind them is capability presentations, and how plants choose who to call is on the industrial automation and robotics page. If you want help preparing the pages for your next plant meeting, tell us what you need.