An important factor is follow through and follow up.
Be flexible enough that your system design will be indistinguishable from our in-house designs.
Be honest in what you can and can't deliver. Also, if it takes eight weeks, tell me and make it happen.
Cost. Cost. Cost.
Closer work/partnership with machine builders.
Ensure subcontractors & vendors meet all listed specifications; understand the implication of other options and explain these to me.
Get to understand our needs and be prepared to understand our standards.
It's not the integrators, it's convincing the internal support that they will never be as good as the integrators.
Listen to what I want.
Make sure you look at all packaging options—don't just push equipment that you are familiar with or tied to from a business perspective.
Really get to know my business and the objectives of our project. Don't provide solutions that don't fit the company.
Reduce cost by using "standard building block approach" to design with few proprietary parts.
Service and support after the installation are more important than price up front.
Talk to the people who actually specify the material used on the machine for good integration.
The ability to add additional or peripheral equipment to [machines] and the "hand-shaking" between these is critical.
24 hr tech support
They need to better understand a production environment. They tend to always present the "pie in the sky" approach, because their data is based on a lab environment. Their scenarios do not include an operator at 2 a.m.
