PLC Programming hours

Hi,

I would like to know if there are any methods to estimate programming times for projects. My sales dept come to me for budgetery quote for the projects we bid. And these are custom machines of one of a kind. Some time there are peripheral equipments apart from PLC,Robot or HMI, involved which need some need some amount of programming or communication set up etc. Any guidelines in this area are helpful.

Thanks in advance.

Hi typical schemes for this are cost per i/o and per hmi screen. If you do a lot of custom machines you must get a good URS and work forward from that

I always add at least 10% for 'oh $hit i didnt factor that in'

What about your time on customer site/hotels/flights etc its all gonna depend on the job. I typicalloy charge out at day rate which excludes uk travel and hotel where applicable

Open Workbench Open-Source Project Scheduling for Windows

Hi kiran,

In order to estimate the PLC Programming Hours, and other time = costs that will go into building a custom machine, you could consider using an open-source project scheduling tool.

You can use it to build a plan built up from estimates for the tasks of work. Being able to plan, makes a complex custom machine building project more manageable.

For more information you can take a look here: http://www.openworkbench.org/index.php

I hope this helps you out. Good luck!

My boss takes whatever I think and doubles it LOL

He's usually pretty close too.
Roy