password/timer for Guarenteed Payment

Hello all,

I have just been asked by my boss about putting a rung in the PLC, to help prevent some customers from withholding payment for extended periods of time. It is said when everyone including the customer is more than satisfied with a project, and yet drag their feet for 45 days or more. I have been asked to start a set of timers, counting for 30 days, at which point it will cause a prompt to come up on the HMI every so often informing them a code needs to be entered withing x number of days.

Any thoughts of possible issues with this?

If this is common, any example/proven code?

Thanks,

Jamie

Late payments are an unfortunate fact of life that we have to deal with. "Time bombs" such as you suggest may appear to be an attractive solution, but you have to ask yourself if the risk of a poor or mistaken implementation is worth the potential payback. There are ways of getting the attention of your customer's accounts payable department, including, but not limited to charging interest. If you know that a customer is chronically late, you can factor that knowledge into your pricing and/or progress payment schedule. If you are worried about whether or not your customer is going to pay at all, then you should probably be soliciting a better class of customers.

Check local laws - this practice is often seen as illegal in many states/countries.

Also search this forum for similar responses that have been given to this question many many times in the past.

What company do you work for?

If you implement this, I want to make sure I don't hire you to work in any of my plants...

NBJamie99 said:

Any thoughts of possible issues with this?

Jamie

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All issues are legal,legal,legal. You better talk to your lawyer first.
And for what its worth, you would never do bussiness with me.

Its been talked about before, do a search for "Time Boom", protecting your code.

NBJamie99 said:

Hello all,

I have just been asked by my boss about putting a rung in the PLC, to help prevent some customers from withholding payment for extended periods of time. It is said when everyone including the customer is more than satisfied with a project, and yet drag their feet for 45 days or more. I have been asked to start a set of timers, counting for 30 days, at which point it will cause a prompt to come up on the HMI every so often informing them a code needs to be entered withing x number of days.

Any thoughts of possible issues with this?

If this is common, any example/proven code?

Thanks,

Jamie

Click to expand...

You can be guaranteed you will never be doing work in this plant again if you go ahead with this.

We have considered the same on rare occassions over the course of years, but ethics always prevented us from doing this.

Also, you must consider the reputation your company will gain once the bomb has been discovered by someone else, believe me, someone else will find it in the PLC code.

Thanks for all the responses, though I am sorry some sound offended by the question. Please understand I did try to preform searches, but did not know what terminology to use, "time-bomb" is very appropriate.

Also I would like to state that I never said that I wanted to do this, I was just asked if it could be done. I know that I personally would rather not have to do it, but if its the choice between my job and that code, I have to think of my family. I seriously do not believe it would ever come to this, and I would plan to argue against any comment suggesting it, but thought I should ask and get supporting information as to my stance on the subject.

Thanks again for all the responses and for any further.

It's done by some very large manufacturers.

If anyone has ever used a Haas CNC, they come with these "timebombs" by default. On a new machine, after 'x' days they will not run unless you call them and get a code.

As long as it is not hidden from the customer, it shouldn't be a problem. Let them know what it is, what needs to be done to correct it, etc, before they make the purchase. Make sure it is obvious when it happens, not just 'don't let the machine start'. Make it something easily done that will minimize downtime on a legitimate customer.

Just to chime in on this subject. We have used this type of lockout function on some machines.

1. It is only with full knowledge and consent of the customer. The presense and reprecussions are spelled out fully in the contract.

2. The machine will not shut down in mid run. But it won't restart.

3. The PLC code is fully unlocked and fully disclosed at the end of payment. (By the way, having the full code does not help in working out the lockout code for any other machine).

4. Accounting says that payments are a lot more timely now.

I as the program writer verified 1-3 with our management before starting with this. Whether or not it is a good idea with customer relations is in their hands.

On a slightly different topic, A previous company I worked for let an electrcian go because he had over 100 emergency calls one year during the night to fix PLC problems as he was our only programmer at that time. After almost a year and a half one of the engineers looked into the problems as there was a lot of money to be saved in downtime. They found he was shutting down the lines in the PLC at certain times. They thought he was a model employee as he always came in to work in a timely manner and resolved the issues quickly.

Unbelievable.

curlyandshemp said:

You can be guaranteed you will never be doing work in this plant again if you go ahead with this.

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This appears to be the overwhelming response, my question is this...
Would you have paid in full for all works completed ? OP did say that this would occur only so many days after payment was due. We aren't talking extrotion here ,we are just talking about finding a way to collect what is owed, sort of like the power company cutting off your power because you havn't paid your bill. Or the finace company repossesing the company truck because you didn't keep up with the payments. What is the difference between these examples and not paying for software provided?

bobwithdana said:

On a slightly different topic, A previous company I worked for let an electrcian go because he had over 100 emergency calls one year during the night to fix PLC problems as he was our only programmer at that time. After almost a year and a half one of the engineers looked into the problems as there was a lot of money to be saved in downtime. They found he was shutting down the lines in the PLC at certain times. They thought he was a model employee as he always came in to work in a timely manner and resolved the issues quickly.

Unbelievable.

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Some 20+ years ago a departing employee at the company I worked for at the time made it a point to established his consulting fee should the company need his services after he was gone, and he made sure everyone knew that he would be avaialble as a consultant. Unknown to us at the time, he had planted several time bombs. About two months later one of those time bombs went off at about 3:00 am. I was called in and it took me about two hours to find the time bomb and remove it. I documented it and wrote a letter to management detailing what I had found. I was asked to check the code of all the other machines for other time bombs. I found one in every machine for which this guy had responsibility, all set for various times but otherwise not very creative - I think he thought he was going to set up about a years worth of easy consulting. The managers decided to pursue damages for down-time. When the ex-employee was notified of the litigation he sang about every time bomb, although I had already found all of them. He suddenly had no desire to be financially responsible for any more down time. Imagine that.

Legal and ethical issues aside, your boss would also be assuming that the end customer had no in-house engineers. If they did, the code you are referring to would be de-activated anyway. Just a thought.

NBJamie99 said:

Thanks for all the responses, though I am sorry some sound offended by the question. Please understand I did try to preform searches, but did not know what terminology to use, "time-bomb" is very appropriate.

Also I would like to state that I never said that I wanted to do this, I was just asked if it could be done. I know that I personally would rather not have to do it, but if its the choice between my job and that code, I have to think of my family. I seriously do not believe it would ever come to this, and I would plan to argue against any comment suggesting it, but thought I should ask and get supporting information as to my stance on the subject.

Thanks again for all the responses and for any further.

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I know where you are coming from. We are asked to do all kinds of wacky stuff from people who don't know any better.