1. Purpose of the gate
Manufacturing ramp complete is the hand-over from a development programme to a running product line. After production release, the first production tools are built with close support from engineering. Problems surface: parts that do not fit, instructions that are unclear, tests that fail for reasons unrelated to the tool, suppliers who cannot hold quality at rate. The ramp is complete when those problems have been worked out and the factory can build tools at the planned cycle time with first-pass factory acceptance results on the agreed trend.
This gate also closes the development programme. Its budget and team are released, the standard cost replaces the development estimate, and what the programme learned is recorded so that the next programme can use it. A product line that keeps calling on the development team after this gate has not truly finished its ramp.
The gate criteria are build quality, with first-pass factory acceptance results on the agreed trend; cycle time at the planned level; standard cost set; and programme lessons learned recorded and shared. No key decision is frozen at this gate, but the decisions frozen at Production release, critical supplier second source and service and spare parts supply model, are tested against real build data here.
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