Why Non-Standard Automation Equipment Projects in China Keep Getting Changed — and How It Starts at the Requirements Stage

Anyone who has spent time around non-standard automation equipment projects will recognize the pattern.

At the start, everyone feels like the requirements are clear. The buyer has explained what output they need, what functions the equipment should perform, what process it needs to run, what results it should achieve. The proposal review sounds reasonable. Work begins.

Then, one by one, the problems surface.

This part needs to be adjusted. That motion needs to be added. This cycle time wasn’t factored in. That process doesn’t connect properly with the upstream and downstream steps. The actual conditions on the buyer’s floor are different from what the supplier understood. Costs keep rising. Timelines keep slipping. By the end, everyone is exhausted.

The buyer thinks the supplier didn’t think it through properly. The supplier thinks the buyer kept changing requirements. The engineers feel like they’re firefighting every day. Management wonders why the project is over budget and behind schedule again.

The easy explanation is poor execution, weak engineering, or a difficult customer relationship. These factors can play a role. But from years of observing how these projects actually develop, the root cause of most rework is almost always earlier than anyone admits.

The requirements captured at the start were surface requirements — not the real ones.

What Buyers Say Is Usually Incomplete, Not Wrong

In equipment projects, what a buyer communicates at the outset is usually genuine. It is just not complete.

A buyer might say: I need a machine that hits this output rate. I need to automate this process. I need to reduce headcount. I need better stability. I need it to handle multiple variants.

All of these are real requirements. None of them is enough on its own.

Each statement describes a desired outcome, not a complete set of constraints. When a buyer says they need higher output, the conversation that actually needs to happen goes much further:

What is the current output? Where exactly is the bottleneck — in the main process cycle, in loading and unloading, in changeover? Is the target rate a theoretical peak or a sustained stable rate? How many hours per day? Does changeover time count? Does abnormal stop time count?

Without answers to these questions, “we need higher output” is not a design specification. It is a direction. And when a supplier designs equipment to a direction rather than a specification, the gaps surface later — in the form of design changes, rework, and disputes.

The same applies to automation requests. A buyer asking for automation doesn’t necessarily mean more automation is better. The right follow-up questions include: which specific motions need to be automated, and which are actually more cost-effective with human assistance? How much volume will this equipment process? Will the process change frequently? Is this a one-off build or will it be replicated across multiple lines? If the equipment fails, is there a manual fallback?

If an automation solution can only ever be used on one project, in one facility, for one product that is likely to change — the business case for building it complex and fully automated is much weaker than it appears at the proposal stage.

Why the Right Questions Don’t Get Asked Early Enough

On the supplier side, thorough requirements questioning can feel like a risk. It might slow down the project start. It might make the scope look more complicated than the proposal suggested. It might give the buyer second thoughts.

On the buyer side, there is often an assumption that the supplier — as the expert — will ask whatever needs to be asked. And there is sometimes a reluctance to expose internal uncertainty about requirements, for fear it will be used to justify a higher price or a longer timeline.

The result is that both sides move forward on a shared but incomplete understanding. And this creates a predictable sequence.

Questions not answered at the requirements stage become design changes at the engineering stage. Design changes not caught at engineering become structural rework at assembly. Rework not caught at assembly becomes cycle time failures at commissioning. Failures not caught at commissioning become acceptance disputes at the buyer’s facility.

The time saved by not asking questions at the beginning gets paid back — with interest — at every subsequent stage.

There is a straightforward reality in equipment projects: changing a requirement at the requirements stage costs a meeting. Changing a design at the engineering stage costs a redraw. Changing a structure after assembly means dismantling the machine. Changing anything at the buyer’s facility costs the most of all.

Requirements clarification doesn’t slow projects down. It prevents the kind of slowing down that happens later, when the cost is much higher.

Six Things That Are Genuinely Not Clear at the Start of Most Projects

What is the real objective?

Is this project about increasing output, reducing labor, improving stability, or accommodating a new product? The answer determines where design effort should concentrate.

A project cannot optimize for everything simultaneously. Projects that try to usually end up doing nothing particularly well — and both buyer and supplier end up disappointed for different reasons.

How is the target output rate actually calculated?

The most common source of output shortfalls is a cycle time calculation that was too simple. The main process time is only one component. A complete cycle includes loading time, unloading time, positioning time, clamping time, cleaning time, inspection time, tool change time, changeover time, fault recovery time, and time spent waiting for upstream or downstream processes.

Proposals that look good on paper often fail in production because the hidden cycle time components were never counted. The right question is not “how long does the main operation take” but “how long does a complete stable cycle take under normal production conditions.”

Is the process window stable?

Equipment and process are inseparable. If the buyer’s process is not yet stable, the equipment design should not be locked down. If the critical dimensions, surface requirements, tooling specifications, and upstream process conditions are not confirmed, neither the buyer nor the supplier has a stable foundation to design against.

Process uncertainty at the requirements stage becomes equipment rework at the commissioning stage — and the question of who pays for that rework is rarely answered cleanly in the original contract.

Which requirements are essential, and which are just desirable?

Equipment projects tend to get more expensive incrementally. Each “it would be nice if” and “can you add this while you’re at it” adds design complexity, procurement cost, assembly time, and maintenance burden — for the buyer to manage for the life of the equipment.

Early in a project, requirements should be sorted into three categories: those without which the equipment cannot be accepted; those that meaningfully affect performance or usability; and those that would be helpful but don’t affect the core objective. Treating everything as essential is how costs become uncontrollable on both sides.

Will the automation solution be replicated?

Automation is not always the right answer, and more automation is not always better. When a motion is high-frequency, stable, and repeatable — and the solution will be replicated across many machines or lines — automation delivers strong returns. The development, commissioning, maintenance, and training costs get spread across many units.

When the solution is one-off, the product is likely to change, and the process is still evolving, the economics look very different. Many automation projects that seemed like good ideas at the proposal stage turn out to have poor return on investment — not because the engineering was wrong, but because the business case was never examined carefully enough at the start.

Are the acceptance criteria specific and confirmable?

“More stable,” “higher efficiency,” “better yield,” “easier to operate” — none of these can serve as acceptance criteria. They produce disputes, not sign-offs.

Acceptance criteria need to be specific enough that both buyer and supplier can confirm, without argument, whether they have been met: what conditions the output rate will be measured under; how long the equipment must run continuously to demonstrate stability; what sample set and time period define the yield measurement; how an abnormal stop is defined; how changeover time is measured; what the site acceptance process includes.

When these are defined before the design is frozen, both sides know what they are working toward. When they are left vague, the acceptance process becomes a negotiation — and by that point, both sides are already tired and the project is already late.

What This Means for Foreign Manufacturers Procuring Equipment in China

The pattern described above is not specific to China. Incomplete requirements are a universal problem in complex equipment projects.

But for a foreign manufacturer procuring non-standard automation equipment from a Chinese supplier, the consequences are harder to manage. The distance means less visibility into how the project is developing. Communication gaps mean that misunderstandings in requirements are less likely to be caught before they become design decisions. And by the time problems surface, the options for addressing them without significant cost and delay are limited.

On the supplier side, there is limited commercial incentive to push back on requirements that seem feasible, even when they are incomplete. Asking too many questions can feel like slowing the project down or risking the order.

On the buyer side, internal uncertainty about requirements is rarely communicated clearly to the supplier — because it feels like weakness, or because the buyer assumes the supplier will figure it out.

This is precisely the gap that independent oversight addresses at the requirements and design review stage. Not replacing either party’s expertise, but providing the questions that neither side has the right incentive to ask — and ensuring that the answers are documented before the design is locked, not discovered during commissioning.

The most expensive problems in non-standard automation projects are not the ones that happen at commissioning. They are the ones set in motion on the first day, when the requirements were accepted without being examined closely enough.

I have spent over a decade observing and managing non-standard automation equipment projects in China — watching requirements reviews, seeing design decisions made on incomplete information, and understanding where the costs land when the questions that should have been asked at the start get answered instead by rework, delay, and budget overruns.

Now I work exclusively for the buyer, providing independent technical risk advisory for foreign manufacturers procuring custom equipment in China.

Honzer Industrial & Independent Risk Consulting Suzhou, China

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