Startup is a phase, not a day

I keep seeing capex projects judged as a success when the line powers up on the target date. In reality the pain lives in the first two weeks of startup. We upgraded a capper and infeed and “went live” on a Monday. Power and motion were there, but it took nine production days to hit the planned rate because we were learning new torque windows for different viscosities, chasing a labeler sensor fault, waiting on a starwheel we did not stock, and sorting out printer templates, SAP master data, and MOC paperwork.

Lesson learned. Treat startup as a phase with owners, budget, and exit criteria. Ours now include water runs, first article approval with QC, eight consecutive hours at 90% of target rate, operator training complete, CMMS PMs loaded, spare parts kitted with min and max in place, vendor support onsite for the first three SKUs, and EHS signoff on tie-ins. If those are not in the plan, the date on the Gantt chart is theater.

For those running packaging projects, how do you structure the handoff to operations and define done? What startup criteria keep you from living on nights and weekends the week after go-live?