The acquisition of production equipment is one step of the production system design process. When design and building of production equipment is handed over to an equipment supplier, higher requirements are placed on the design information exchange to secure that the equipment corresponds to technical and financial requirements of the buying company. The paper presents results on characteristics of design information exchanged and success factors for effective collaboration between equipment suppliers and manufacturing companies. Results are based on an in-depth case study at a Swedish manufacturing company and a survey of 25 equipment suppliers.