You were in production Karl, in a average year, how few ahead of release date did the casting and machining start? I can imagine design and engineering started at least a year prior.
For normal production with minor changes from year to year, it's usually get the tool modified for the new part and then test run it on a weekend when the lines weren't making production...
Install the new tool in the station and run a batch of parts through and see how they ran... We would measure and gauge the parts until we established that the machine was capable and we were comfortable that they were all good coming off the machine...
Then when we were done with our batch run, we would put the regular production tool back in the station and run some parts to verify that it was set up properly and making good parts... You never walk away from the machine until it's ready to go back on line production again...
