"Change"...no not political question.

I was just reading one of PLCS.net newsletters about change and being dedicated to one particular brand of PLC and not trying something new.

Along the same lines how do you guys address trying to change peoples minds from using hardwire/relay to using PLCs? I'm not talking about critical applications but rather applications where a PLC would be more efficient and practical. The comment I have ran into most often is that it's easier to troubleshoot problems the old way, but what they really mean is they just change parts until it starts working again.

Was just curious as to how some of you guys addressed upgrading controls to something more modern and efficient.

I generally pitch this kind of change as "Yes, relays are great for what you want to do today, but 3 months from now when you want to tweak the process slightly it's going to take a lot more to re-wire relays then to make a 3 second program change"

Between that and the space savings/fault finding assistance from a PLC, it's usually an easy sell.

When it comes to PLCs...."jack of all trades, master of none" comes to my mind.

I'm a developer, I know AB very well and as a result I am more efficient, and I've developed tools outside the PLC program environment to help be create programs quicker. (Excel and VBA). There is a lot of effort into those tools, which at the end of the day make life easy.

Jump ship to another platform, those tools either have to be re-developed, or you grin and bear it the direct way. Causes you to be inefficient and labor hours goes up along with costs.

I've worked with other Platforms, and when you get to a point where you are really comfortable with a platform, then you can increase the sophistication of your applications. Spend all your time re-learning a platform, you application will remain pretty basic.

It's all a balance thing, I think everyone understands you have to move forward with technology, but you also have to be dedicated too.