Support for another Siemens Vendor

Hi Guys.
Apologies for the long winded script but I want to give you the full script

I imagine some of you guys have been in the same situation at sometime.

We're based in the UK, with Our products at a certain UK factory that a few years ago decided to buy a production line from an Italian company for what ever reasons. This company has ceased trading and support from Italy is very hard to get. For instance an inverter went down (nowt special a G120C. the line was down for 5 days).

The Line seems to be a bit of a Monster (well certainly to me). There's four 1500 CPUs and 12 1200 CPUs n complete bucket load of et200 remote devices. 15 Hmis and 52drives that ive discovered so far

how can I find the true topology

Would you Take it ON

Your thought/advice more thann welcome

Cheers Geniuses

Do they have the offine programs? That would probably be the place to start.

I would request all their info on this system and then quote for a survey. Something like 2 or 3 days with a two man team on site to chase the system and rebuild some of the documentation as well as checking whether the PLC's are password locked.

With that in hand, put a quote together and be sure to include the already paid survey as part of the cost to be given back over a year in small chunks or on the last month. You should also have a deliverable of the survey to the client, even if it's a parts list and a schematic (this is how I manage to have any survey accepted by management as we're paying for the survey, not for a quote).

Taking things on blindly is asking for trouble or lost business as you may go overboard with all the unknowns. If you screw up and end up losing money, the relationship with the customer will start to break down as well. It's always best to be upfront with them and explain where you are.

Exiled, For the profinet topology I would recommend you to scan the Network with the Siemens tool, PRONETA.

https://support.industry.siemens.co...-diagnostics-tool-for-profinet?dti=0&lc=en-WW

Obviously you cannot take on any responsibility. As long as that is clear, I would be OK with taking o such a job.

You need the PLC program with the password obviously. Without that it becomes a factor 100 more difficult.
If you are lucky, it is a TIA program that includes network toplogy.
As to check what network topology is actually out there, you can use Siemens PRONETA, which is a free tool.

Other useful information would be electrical schematics, mechanical drawings, layout and flow-sheet drawings, user manuals, service manuals, anything.

One thing I would be very hestitant to deal with at all would be the safety. I would tell the customer that they should appoint someone that is responsible. That alone is a project in itself. Do they have a risk assessment of the plant ?
You can assist with checking if all safeties are in place, but only working as directed by the person responsible.

So myself and another guy (Spannermonkey with no understanding of networks. Sorry M8). went down and had a prelim look.

Proneta played a blinder in displaying a lot of topology info. The client has no copies/bakups of any sort Which tbh I didn't think they would of. I managed to suck out the 1500s without a problem but the 1200s didn't really want to play ball.

If it was me calling the shots id go for it but as to those in higher places the costs of numerous surveys etc probably out way the potential income. think ill just put it on the bosses desk

Cheers fellaz

I'd jump on it; it sounds very interesting. I ran into a similar scenario about a year ago but it was a Chinese manufacturer.

How much did the 5 day shut down cost them? They're probably terrified of a similar event and should be willing to pay well to avoid it.

I would take it on to grab backups of everything... even if for the HMIs you can only capture the images using ProSave, or hard drive backups if they are PC-based HMIs. If anything breaks down, that machine is basically finished producing, and it will cost WAY MORE to reverse engineer even just one HMI, PLC or drive, than to upload everything at the very least.

Not sure why the S7-1200s "wouldn't play ball", unless they were done with STEP 7 Basic V10.5 (TIA Portal), which I doubt if they have S7-1500s on the machine. Can you elaborate on "wouldn't play ball"?

sigmadelta said:

Not sure why the S7-1200s "wouldn't play ball", unless they were done with STEP 7 Basic V10.5 (TIA Portal), which I doubt if they have S7-1500s on the machine. Can you elaborate on "wouldn't play ball"?

Click to expand...

Not OP, but you may be assuming they were all put in at the same time. Didn't the first revisions of TIA Portal not allow upload from other versions too?

cardosocea said:

Didn't the first revisions of TIA Portal not allow upload from other versions too?

Click to expand...

I read some instances where that was the case.

The trial versions of older versions are still available from download from Siemens:

Siemens Industry Online Support - Search for TRIAL in Software for Industrial Controllers

Are there any safety PLCs ?
If so it might be a problem, since even if the regular PLC program isnt password protected, the safety program is always password protected.