Recent weeks of following this forum have led me to reflect on how far I have come in my life as a controls focused engineer. Possibly it would be good for the "senior" and "junior" members here to each add there own stories of their ascendance from young know-it-all punkdom to wise control system gurus for the people that are just beginning to frequent this site.
My first experience with the "magic black box" that I have come to know and love as a PLC began when I was a mere 18 years old straight off the farm as an internship with Rockwell Software. I started in October of that year with the holiday season right around the corner. As was a tradition in those days for interns starting in the fall I was handed a box that contained 16 strings of Christmas lights, a 5/05 SLC processor, a 16 point relay output card and a fire extinguisher (an obvious sign of failure on the part of my predecessors). I truely had a charmed upbringing into the world of PLC control, if there was a question of how something in RSLogix 500 worked I was directed to go up one floor and go two offices on the left ... that was the person that wrote it ... he could answer (and did) any and all question that I had. By the end of that 3 month stint I had developed a Christmas light system that incorporated PLC control as well as web enabled SCADA based recipe control ... looking back I had well over 100K in software tied up in those Christmas lights, but it was all just a demo of what Rockwell Software could do.
I spent six wonderful years with Rockwell in various rolls from software testing and applications engineering to being the technical expert behind the scenes at Automation Fair and RSTecheEd. I was blessed to have many true experts in the field of industrial controls at my disposal including Mr. Roach who is a member here, he was and is truly held as a man of brilliance among brilliant men within Rockwell Automation, never take the free advice that he gives here lightly.
Towards the end of my time with Rockwell I discovered that the level of expertise I thought I had being a "factory guy" was truly an illusion and that I was ignorant of the real world of industrial controls. At that point I switched careers and went to work as an electrician for a small local company that focused on industrial controls. I spent six years with that company learning true machine control from a man with an eighth grade education that to this day I only hope to be able to emulate. This is the point that I finally started to do true PLC programming only after learn and perfecting hardwire control on systems from the 1950s (At 32 years of age I have seen and worked on a drum encoder which if I ever here comes out of service will sit in the entry of my office, a true piece of controls artwork when polished) I spent those six years learning from experience and from the mistakes of myself and others what to do and what not to do when it came to PLC based machine control.
Recently I was offered an amazing opportunity to take over a role in charge of automation for a mini-mill aluminum facility. I have had the chance to work with not only the control systems that are familiar to us all, and some not, as well as see and work with level 2 control systems that surpass the functionality of even the highest end PLC processors on the market, extending controls into the theoretical physics modeling arena. This position has been a true blessing extending even further my "hobby" for industrial control.
To all of you that are quick to blame a failure of LOTO for an incident in a facility, remember, you have to live with the effects of your code both good and bad. You might have prevented that fatality or injury by being more careful in how you programmed that logic in the middle of the night ... you have to sleep at night knowing you did all you could to prevent that worst case event no matter the failure of others to follow procedure. I know I will lose a tremendous amount of sleep if my code kills someone.
To the "juniors" that view the "seniors" as rude. We expect a lot from you. Your mistakes could cost someone their life. This is the real world, people die when machinery does not function properly, we want you to succeed, we just want everyone to go home to their families each night in the process. Understand we have also just worked 10, 20, 30 hours or more in our respective plants before we answer your questions, and trust me once that 10 hour mark is crossed "rudeness" is exponential, live with it you still have your answer.
To the "seniors" addressing the "juniors," the world is changing, everyone that touches a PLC will not be a master electrician with the veteran mechanics understand of how the machine functions. You are in an unique position to help prevent accidents by answering these questions, how long ago were you too an ignorant "pup." Share your knowledge when appropriate, withhold it when appropriate, but remember that you are offering advice to the people that will be writing the controls that your sons, daughters and grand children will be working with.
Let's all get along and stop the senior junior **** ... the code will be written with or with out your help, but which way would you rather have it?
Thanks to the following (and many more) for being where I am today
Tim Boppre
Matt Kujawa
Haison Lu
Dave Snyder
Glen Mushall
Joe Zons
Jeff Storley
Bob Walls
Ray Kummer, over and over ... the man that led me to my Master Electricians license
Jeff Senn
Duane Smith
My first experience with the "magic black box" that I have come to know and love as a PLC began when I was a mere 18 years old straight off the farm as an internship with Rockwell Software. I started in October of that year with the holiday season right around the corner. As was a tradition in those days for interns starting in the fall I was handed a box that contained 16 strings of Christmas lights, a 5/05 SLC processor, a 16 point relay output card and a fire extinguisher (an obvious sign of failure on the part of my predecessors). I truely had a charmed upbringing into the world of PLC control, if there was a question of how something in RSLogix 500 worked I was directed to go up one floor and go two offices on the left ... that was the person that wrote it ... he could answer (and did) any and all question that I had. By the end of that 3 month stint I had developed a Christmas light system that incorporated PLC control as well as web enabled SCADA based recipe control ... looking back I had well over 100K in software tied up in those Christmas lights, but it was all just a demo of what Rockwell Software could do.
I spent six wonderful years with Rockwell in various rolls from software testing and applications engineering to being the technical expert behind the scenes at Automation Fair and RSTecheEd. I was blessed to have many true experts in the field of industrial controls at my disposal including Mr. Roach who is a member here, he was and is truly held as a man of brilliance among brilliant men within Rockwell Automation, never take the free advice that he gives here lightly.
Towards the end of my time with Rockwell I discovered that the level of expertise I thought I had being a "factory guy" was truly an illusion and that I was ignorant of the real world of industrial controls. At that point I switched careers and went to work as an electrician for a small local company that focused on industrial controls. I spent six years with that company learning true machine control from a man with an eighth grade education that to this day I only hope to be able to emulate. This is the point that I finally started to do true PLC programming only after learn and perfecting hardwire control on systems from the 1950s (At 32 years of age I have seen and worked on a drum encoder which if I ever here comes out of service will sit in the entry of my office, a true piece of controls artwork when polished) I spent those six years learning from experience and from the mistakes of myself and others what to do and what not to do when it came to PLC based machine control.
Recently I was offered an amazing opportunity to take over a role in charge of automation for a mini-mill aluminum facility. I have had the chance to work with not only the control systems that are familiar to us all, and some not, as well as see and work with level 2 control systems that surpass the functionality of even the highest end PLC processors on the market, extending controls into the theoretical physics modeling arena. This position has been a true blessing extending even further my "hobby" for industrial control.
To all of you that are quick to blame a failure of LOTO for an incident in a facility, remember, you have to live with the effects of your code both good and bad. You might have prevented that fatality or injury by being more careful in how you programmed that logic in the middle of the night ... you have to sleep at night knowing you did all you could to prevent that worst case event no matter the failure of others to follow procedure. I know I will lose a tremendous amount of sleep if my code kills someone.
To the "juniors" that view the "seniors" as rude. We expect a lot from you. Your mistakes could cost someone their life. This is the real world, people die when machinery does not function properly, we want you to succeed, we just want everyone to go home to their families each night in the process. Understand we have also just worked 10, 20, 30 hours or more in our respective plants before we answer your questions, and trust me once that 10 hour mark is crossed "rudeness" is exponential, live with it you still have your answer.
To the "seniors" addressing the "juniors," the world is changing, everyone that touches a PLC will not be a master electrician with the veteran mechanics understand of how the machine functions. You are in an unique position to help prevent accidents by answering these questions, how long ago were you too an ignorant "pup." Share your knowledge when appropriate, withhold it when appropriate, but remember that you are offering advice to the people that will be writing the controls that your sons, daughters and grand children will be working with.
Let's all get along and stop the senior junior **** ... the code will be written with or with out your help, but which way would you rather have it?
Thanks to the following (and many more) for being where I am today
Tim Boppre
Matt Kujawa
Haison Lu
Dave Snyder
Glen Mushall
Joe Zons
Jeff Storley
Bob Walls
Ray Kummer, over and over ... the man that led me to my Master Electricians license
Jeff Senn
Duane Smith
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