The Robotics Buyer’s Field Kit
The robotics vendor is selling a demonstration engineered to be believed. This kit is the buyer’s counter-procedure: how to vet the seller before the capital is committed, built as working tools rather than advice.
What is in it
The Skeptic’s Field Guide (REA·008). The full 18-page paper the instruments are drawn from: the 2026 vendor field mapped into three tiers by risk, the actuarial reality of vendor mortality with three documented failures, and the reasoning behind every weight and clause.
A 12-page field kit (PDF). A compendium showing how the five deployment papers interlock, followed by the instruments themselves: the vendor scorecard and its decision bands, the ten contract clauses as a negotiation checklist, a fill-in counter-demo protocol, four clipboard question scripts, and a one-page red-flag chart for the procurement desk.
An Excel workbook that runs the scorecard: dropdown scoring, automatic weighting, the four decision bands, an automatic red-flag override, and a tracker for the ten clauses.
- A counter-demo protocol the buyer designs and the vendor cannot choreograph.
- A spec-sheet decoder that turns “up to,” “autonomous” and “99% uptime” into the questions that break them.
- Five balance-sheet questions that test a vendor’s survival, with no finance background required.
- A reference-check script aimed at maintenance technicians, not vice presidents.
- Ten contract clauses that convert vendor risk into vendor obligation.
Who it is for
Operations, maintenance and procurement leaders buying their first robots, or their first robots from a new vendor. The organizing rule throughout: valuation is noise, deployment hours are signal. No demo, however dazzling, outscores a missing fleet.
It was written from the buyer’s side of the table by someone who has spent twenty-five years in fleet management — leasing equipment, holding vendors to their uptime, and living with the consequences when they don’t.
Read the series first
The rest of the deployment series stays free: the asset thesis, the pilot trap, the capital structure, the crew, and fleet reliability. The kit is what to use once you are actually talking to a seller.