Most new plants in India do not miss their start-of-production date because of one big failure. They miss it because of a dozen small decisions taken in the wrong order — a building leased before the layout was fixed, machines ordered before the utilities were sized, a line installed before anyone agreed what "accepted" means. This checklist puts those decisions in the order that protects your schedule and budget.
It is written for founders, plant heads and project managers setting up a new manufacturing unit or a major expansion — whether that is an assembly plant for auto components, an EV battery line, an appliance plant or a heavy fabrication shop.
Phase 1 — Define what the plant must produce
1. Fix the product mix, volumes and ramp-up curve
Everything downstream — the number of stations, machines, people, floor area and power — comes from demand. Write down, for each product family: annual volume in year one and at full maturity, number of variants, expected mix, and how quickly volumes will ramp. If volumes are uncertain, define a base case and an expansion case, and design so the second is possible without rebuilding the first.
2. Decide shift pattern and available time
Two shifts or three? Six days or seven? Available production time decides takt time — the rhythm at which the plant must produce one unit to meet demand. A plant designed for two shifts has room to grow into a third; a plant designed for three from day one has none.
3. Define the process and make-or-buy boundary
List every operation from raw material to dispatch and decide which you will do in-house and which you will buy as finished components. Each in-house operation adds equipment, floor area, skills and utilities. Many first plants are over-scoped because they try to do everything internally from day one.
Phase 2 — Design the plant on paper
4. Build the process and line balance
Break each product into work elements, estimate or measure the time for each, and balance them into stations so that no station exceeds takt. This gives you the station count, manpower and a first equipment list. It is also the stage where you decide which operations justify automation.
5. Develop the layout before you finalise the building
The layout should drive the building — not the other way round. Place receiving, stores, production, quality, finished goods and dispatch so material flows in one direction with minimum travel and no crossing paths. Check column grids, clear heights, floor loading, dock positions and where the next line will go. Plant layout design is the cheapest stage to fix mistakes: a line can be moved on a drawing in minutes; on a floor it costs weeks.
6. Size utilities from the equipment list
Once the equipment list is drafted, build a connected-load schedule (kW per machine, diversity factor), a compressed-air demand estimate, cooling-water needs, lighting levels and any ventilation or fume extraction. Undersized power or air is one of the most common reasons commissioning stalls. Hand this data to your civil and MEP contractor early, so transformer, DG, compressor room and cable routes are ready when equipment arrives.
Phase 3 — Specify and build the equipment
7. Write specifications with acceptance criteria
For every line, machine, fixture and conveyor, write down what it must achieve: cycle time, quality characteristics, variants, safety, makes of controls and pneumatics, documentation and — most importantly — how it will be accepted. "Machine should run" is not an acceptance criterion; "runs 200 consecutive parts at 42 s cycle time with zero dimensional rejects" is. Our guide on how to write an RFQ covers this in detail.
8. Decide the contracting model
You can buy each piece of equipment separately and integrate it yourself, or appoint one partner accountable for the complete production system. Separate contracts can look cheaper line by line, but someone must own the interfaces — conveyor heights, controls hand-shakes, utilities, schedules — and the ramp-up. If you do not have an in-house project engineering team, a turnkey plant setup partner usually costs less in total than the delays of a fragmented chain.
9. Insist on factory acceptance tests
Equipment should be run and accepted at the builder's facility (FAT) before dispatch, with your parts wherever possible. Problems found at FAT cost days; problems found on your floor cost weeks and your team's confidence.
Phase 4 — Install, commission and ramp up
10. Plan installation before dispatch
Confirm foundations, anchoring, utilities points, access routes and rigging before any truck leaves. A site-readiness checklist, signed by the civil contractor and the equipment supplier, prevents machines standing idle in packing crates.
11. Commission against a written protocol
Commissioning should follow a protocol: I/O checks, sequence tests, safety-function tests, dry runs, trial production and a site acceptance test (SAT) against the criteria agreed in step 7. Track open points on a punch list with owners and dates. See installation and commissioning.
12. Resource the ramp-up
The first weeks of production reveal issues no drawing could predict. Keep engineers from the equipment side on site during ramp-up, train operators on standard work, and measure output, quality and downtime daily until the plant holds its target. Only then close the project.
Common mistakes that delay start of production
- Leasing or constructing the building before the layout is frozen.
- Ordering machines before utilities are sized — then discovering the transformer or compressor is too small.
- No single owner for interfaces between multiple vendors.
- Acceptance criteria that are vague, so nobody can say whether equipment is "complete".
- Skipping FAT to save time, and losing far more time on site.
- Treating documentation and training as optional, leaving the plant dependent on suppliers.
A realistic timeline
Timelines vary widely with scope, but as a planning reference: an engineering study and layout freeze typically takes 4–8 weeks; equipment design and build 3–6 months depending on automation content; installation and commissioning 3–8 weeks; ramp-up a further 4–12 weeks. A single line in an existing building can be much faster; a greenfield plant including civil works usually takes 9–15 months from decision to stable production.
If you are planning a new plant or a major expansion, send us your product, volumes and site details. We will come back with a scoped approach, a stage-wise schedule and the questions that matter.