"Find mistakes on a small scale and make a profit on a large scale."
This simple yet powerful insight from KERONE Engineering Solutions Ltd. sums up the entire purpose of a Pilot when scaling cleantech. Before you dive headfirst into building a Demo or FOAK (First-of-a-Kind) facility, your Pilot is where you de-risk your technology, understand your manufacturing constraints, and identify problems while they’re still small and fixable.
Skip this stage or underestimate its importance - and pay the price when you scale too soon.
What is a Pilot?
A Pilot is your first real-world test—where you prove that your technology works outside the lab. It’s not about commercial success (yet). It’s about learning how your product behaves under real-world conditions and what challenges you’ll face at scale. Think of it as your first cautious step into industrial reality.
How Big Should Your Pilot Be?
The golden rule: Keep it as small as possible, but big enough to give you reliable data. The standard recommendation is that a Pilot should be 1x bigger than your laboratory setup. But in reality, the availability of equipment and supplier constraints will dictate the actual size.
Take lithium-ion cell manufacturing as an example:
Laboratory scale: Anything under 100 MWh per year
Pilot scale: Defined by mixer size—labs typically use 5-10 liter mixers, while Pilot lines use up to 50 liters.
Pilots help bridge the gap between theory and industrial reality—and that means focusing on five key areas that will shape your scale-up strategy.
What Your Pilot Should Teach You
1️⃣ Adjusting Your Core Technology Your product might work in the lab, but industrial production is a different beast. Standardized manufacturing equipment, commercial-grade materials, and real-world conditions might require tweaks to your design or process.
✅ Track changes during Pilot production. If your tech doesn’t fit off-the-shelf equipment or available raw materials, it’s time to adapt.
2️⃣ Mapping Out Equipment Constraints A Pilot is often the first time you engage with real suppliers. You’ll quickly learn:
✔️ What equipment is available
✔️ What’s too expensive or slow to deliver
✔️ Which vendors are reliable
Even though you’ll start with the smallest available machines, this knowledge is crucial when planning your next step—your Demo plant.
3️⃣ Understanding Production Speed & Automation Lab work is slow and manual. Scaling up means introducing automation—even at the Pilot stage.
✔️ How do your materials behave at higher speeds?
✔️ Can your process handle continuous operation instead of batch production?
✔️ Where do you start seeing bottlenecks?
These insights help you optimize your production flow before moving to full-scale operations.
4️⃣ Preparing for Industrial Environments Scaling isn’t just about the product—it’s about the entire manufacturing ecosystem.
A Pilot forces you to consider:
✔️ Space requirements (worker passages, lighting, ventilation)
✔️ Health & safety (fire hazards, waste management)
✔️ Environmental compliance (air purification, emissions control)
These infrastructure challenges become much bigger when you move to Demo and FOAK levels—better to start addressing them early.
5️⃣ Identifying Quality Bottlenecks
I’ll never tire of saying that lab-scale products often don’t translate directly to industrial-scale manufacturing. At the Pilot stage, you start seeing:
✔️ Which quality control issues appear first
✔️ How consistently your raw materials perform
✔️ Where automation creates variability in output
Quality issues increase with scale, but Pilots let you catch the worst ones early—saving millions in later-stage corrections.
The Takeaway: Don’t Skip the Pilot Stage
🚀 Scaling too early = costly failures.
🛠️ A well-executed Pilot gives you data, not just assumptions.
📊 The smaller the mistakes, the bigger the profits later.
Your Pilot is not about proving you can sell—it’s about proving you can make. The insights you gain here will determine whether your scale-up journey is smooth or painful.
What’s your experience with Pilots? Drop your thoughts in the comments!