Siemens "Help with protecting my project"

mk42 said:

At least in the 1500's, the PLC code can be locked to the serial number of either the PLC or the memory card. Not sure if the 1200's support the same feature.

Nothing to prevent it in the HMI though.

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You can set the HMI's to protection mode.

However that locks out downloading and uploading. The only way to remove it that I know of is to factory reset them.

Rob... said:

You can set the HMI's to protection mode.

However that locks out downloading and uploading. The only way to remove it that I know of is to factory reset them.

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Huh, never seen that before, that's interesting. Where's the setting?

mk42 said:

Huh, never seen that before, that's interesting. Where's the setting?

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I'll let you know tomorrow when I get back to the office.

Ok, shutdown runtime on the HMI.

In the HMI functions menu, where you can set the time etc.. enter protected running mode.

It will ask for a password to be created.

This locks all uploads and downloads to the HMI. Without this password, it needs to be factory reset to remove the protection.

We just end up with two Italian machines at our factory. None of the suppliers is willing to handle over the software. So we are stuck with two machines that can stop any moment for several days with no option to do anything about it. Believe me. Never buy a machine with locked software..

I'm the IT/Production Systems manager at a plant, i do all of the PLC and HMI maintenance as needed for our plant and locked PLC code on equipment we bought drives me crazy.



One of the vendors sent me a quote for $30,000 to get the engineering package to "unlock" one of the PLC programs, we HAD 9 of their machines on site. All i was looking for was the ability to view all of the logic and help maintenance troubleshoot some bad sensor issues we were having on them. Their HMI program didn't show the inputs so maintenance couldn't flag the sensor and see if it was actually working right.



So instead of dealing with that company anymore and that shady "engineering package" bull####, we waited until it was time to replace the machines and went with another company replacing all 9 of their $500,000 machines and they lost 4.5M in potential sales at our plant. We have also started to replace them at other plants as well so there's no telling how much money they will end up losing.



The equipment wasn't some super specialized highly secretive machine either, they were just trying to squeeze more money out of their customers.

Jsu0234m said:

I'm the IT/Production Systems manager at a plant, i do all of the PLC and HMI maintenance as needed for our plant and locked PLC code on equipment we bought drives me crazy.

So instead of dealing with that company anymore and that shady "engineering package" bull####, we waited until it was time to replace the machines and went with another company replacing all 9 of their $500,000 machines and they lost 4.5M in potential sales at our plant. We have also started to replace them at other plants as well so there's no telling how much money they will end up losing.

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I find this interesting because realistically if you're in the business of operating machines, you're generally not interested in copying them. In the past or certainly in other countries (like China), this is a real threat, but in western economies, not so much.

Interestingly, I've seen in other industries an openness to give the code under a legal (no copy and if you modify, the liability is on you) contract and some heavily tested functions would be blocked.

Or as a SI told me last year, it's better for the business to make the code a one time purchase and have a support contract for it than to force people to using them by blocking access to it.

hagos said:

I would say big NO too.

I will tell about our experience.

A year ago we received a machine that our company used to pay the full cost of.
The machine vendor has hired a guy to write them the program, the guy was present at our facility for the shake down & commissioning of the machine.

Soon that guy finished his job & handed the machine to us we began to suffer where the machine resets it's working cycle at a fixed intervals (about every two hours).

We tried to access the CPU to fix the problem , but we found it password locked, we contacted the guy who programmed the machine, his reply was that he owe the vendor some money, we told him that we payed the vendor the full price, he refused to release the password.

At last our company was forced to pay the guy the money although we payed the full price before.

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wow, just wow

Did you report him to Siemens?

For the rare times that we use "Outside Code" in our systems, there is a clause in the contract that disallows acceptance if any code (including PLC/HMI/Custom) is not provided, unlocked, and available to us.


Had a nearly million dollar incident where the vendor would not release the code, so had to remove the equipment at their own cost, and repair the machine foundation from the install.


/shrug.