The integrator is the one who signs

Most robot projects involve three companies, and the one that matters most to you is not the one whose name is on the arm.

A typical cell has three parties behind it. A manufacturer builds the robot. A dealer, which is what we are, supplies it and helps work out whether it fits the job. An integrator designs the cell around it, builds or specifies the tooling, wires the controls, works out the guarding, installs the thing on your floor, and validates that all of it does what it was supposed to do. Three companies, three sets of invoices, and one of them carries something the other two do not.

The integrator signs the risk assessment. In practice that means a named firm takes engineering responsibility for the statement that this cell, as built, in your building, with your people walking past it, is safe to run. That signature is the actual product. Everything else in the project is hardware and hours.

This is why we say on every page that we are never the integrator of record. It is not modesty and it is not boilerplate a lawyer made us add. It is a description of who does what. We can tell you that a 20 kilogram arm reaches across your pallet pattern, because that is arithmetic we can do from a datasheet. We cannot tell you your cell is safe, because determining that requires an engineer standing in your building, assessing the actual installation against ANSI and A3 R15.06 and ISO 10218, and for collaborative applications running the power and force measurements that ISO/TS 15066 describes. Then putting their name to the result.

A fair question at this point is whether the split is real, because plenty of integrators also sell robots. That is true and it is normal. Many of the best integrators in the country are also dealers for one or two brands, and there is nothing wrong with it. The thing worth watching is narrower: when one firm both selects the equipment and certifies the cell, the party checking the work is the party that chose the hardware. That is not fraud, it is just an incentive worth knowing about. The practical version of the concern is brand lock, because a firm that carries one manufacturer will tend to find that manufacturer's arm to be the answer. Ask any integrator which brands they are certified on, and then ask what they would have specified if they were not.

Before you sign, get the name of the individual who will perform and sign the risk assessment, not just the company. Ask what safety training that person holds. Ask whether the completed assessment is a deliverable you receive a copy of, because it should be, and it is your document once the cell is yours. If a firm treats its risk assessment as an internal artifact you do not get to keep, that tells you something about how the relationship will go when there is a problem.

While you are asking, ask for the rest of the package too. You want the electrical drawings, the pneumatic schematic, the parts list with real manufacturer part numbers rather than the integrator's internal codes, the validation records, and above all a backup of the robot program and the PLC program. If the only copy of the program that runs your cell lives on the integrator's laptop, you do not own an automated cell. You are renting one, and the rent gets renegotiated the first time you need a change and they are eight weeks out.

None of this is adversarial. Good integrators expect these questions and usually have the answers ready, because the firms that do this well have been asked before by customers who got burned somewhere else. The ones who get cagey about documentation and signatures are telling you exactly what you needed to know, at the only point in the project where the information is still cheap.