The plant closing checklist, equipment side

1. Before the announcement

The most valuable weeks in a closure are the ones nobody uses. Almost every task that raises the recovery can be done while the closure is still confidential.

• Name 1 person who owns the equipment, from the first list to the last truck.
• Find the 2 governing dates: lease or site handover, and the day utilities go off.
• Confirm which machines are leased, financed, customer owned or pledged to a lender.
• Decide who inside the building needs to know, and route all questions through 1 address.
• Get a valuation under a non-disclosure agreement, using region and industry rather than the site name.
• Take advice from your own counsel on WARN Act and state mini-WARN notification sequencing before anything visible starts.

2. Building the equipment list

The fixed-asset register is an accounting record. It will be wrong about half of what is on your floor. Somebody walks the plant with a phone and a spreadsheet.

• 8 fields per machine: make, model, year, serial, quantity, condition, under power, what goes with it.
• 5 photographs per machine: whole machine from a corner, nameplate, control panel, working section, any damage.
• Write the faults down. They will be found anyway, and finding them late is what kills deals.
• Number every machine, write the number on the machine, and name the photograph folders the same way.
• Record overall size and weight, and how each machine gets out of the building.
• Keep the site name, the address and any internal valuation off the document.

3. What to stop doing immediately

These are the value leaks. Each one is free to prevent and expensive to fix, and each one happens in the ordinary course of shutting a plant down.

• Stop cannibalizing machines that are being sold. If a part must be taken, record what came from where.
• Stop moving tooling away from its machine. Tooling travels with the machine or it is worth a fraction.
• Stop disconnecting anything before it is sold or before the calendar forces it.
• Stop putting equipment outside "temporarily". It does not come back.
• Stop throwing away manuals, wiring diagrams, program backups and license keys.
• Photograph every nameplate before anything moves.

4. Choosing the disposal route

There are 3 routes, and most closures use more than 1. Decide while the plant is still standing, not after the last shift.

• Outright sale: a fixed number, a fixed date, and the removal risk transfers to the buyer.
• Broker or consignment: the highest ceiling, no floor, and you carry the space and the insurance.
• Auction: speed and completeness on a set date, at the lowest of the 3 standards of value.
• Split the floor. Good machines one way, general plant equipment another.
• Read any agreement for exclusivity, duration, commission structure and who pays if a sale is canceled.
• Redeployment beats all 3 when it is real. Test it: who receives it, when, and out of whose budget.

5. Access, safety and utilities during removal

Utilities get canceled the moment the plant stops making anything, which is exactly when the removal crews need them. Set the shut-off dates against the removal schedule, in writing.

• Keep power, lighting, compressed air and water live in the removal zone until the last machine leaves.
• Keep a working dock or overhead door, with clear height and width measured rather than remembered.
• Keep 1 person with keys who knows the building and the isolators.
• Give every crew the pack: floor loading limits, route, overhead clearances, hazardous material register.
• Record residual energy per machine: stored pressure, capacitors, raised platens, counterweights.
• Sequence removals by access, not by value. A machine moved twice is charged twice.
• Use the site permit-to-work system you already have rather than inventing a closure version.

6. After the last truck

• Sign every machine out: what it was, its number, who took it, when, on whose authority.
• Photograph the empty footprints and the condition of the floor, walls and doors.
• Reconcile what left against the fixed-asset register and close the records.
• Cap and label every service that stays behind.
• Deal with what nobody wants: pallets, racking, packaging, drums and process residue.
• Return or dispose of leased and customer-owned equipment, with proof.
• Hand the building over against the lease condition schedule, not against memory.