theColonel26
Lifetime Supporting Member
I have been working for a small turn key machine builder. We mostly do table top machine which do a few automated steps in assembling a product, but I have had to program some very involved machines too. When I came on board I had never worked for a machine builder before I worked in a test lab where we built a lot of our own automated test machines/fixtures. We were our own customer. I took a few PLC and controls classes in college, but after that I was entirely self taught. So no body every really cared how many hours it took to complete a project they only cared if it was done by a certain date.
My boss is a machinist by training and only has a basic/abstract understanding of controls. When I first started he would ask me to quote labor on a job, Electrical Design, Programming, Panel Build and Wiring, and Debugging. He told me to quote based on what I thought it would take me to do it. The first time I quoted I screwed up really badly and severally under quoted labor or at least it took be quite a lot longer to get it all done than I had thought it would. He was none to pleased. So after that I started trying to add in contingency time. Unbeknownst to me at the time he started asking the other controls engineer what he thought of my numbers. So he started coming back to me and telling me to lower my numbers that they were too high and I was sandbagging. He would tell me to lower them and that I need to hit that time. I of course seldom did because well in my opinion it was too low, and I would be creating a cobbled together mess. I have gradually kept lower my quality of work on Programs and Schematics. I gradually got more inline with what he wanted but then I would have projects where I would run in to a major technical problem for example I had one project that I quoted the programming on it as 40 hours. I had issues getting some EthernetIP sensors to communicate reliably with the PLC. I had the vendor which sold us the PLC and the sensors remote in. They had 2 different guys work on it but they couldn't make any progress with it either. I eventually got it figured out by trial and error because the documentation on how the communication was supposed to work was wrong. All of this took an additionally 40 hours. I would like to point out that the PLC and Sensors where spec out by the customer and I had no say in choosing them. The whole time my boss is acting like I am just incompetent because, "problems like this just don't happen."
He eventually came up with this rule which was a "good controls Engineer" should be able to quote a project within 10% on labor every time. Also a "good controls engineer" should be able to write a program offline, and only have no more than 10% of the total of Programming and Debug, be actual Debug. So say you spend 80 hours writing a program offline with no ability to debug it. In his opinion you should only need to spend 8 additional hours debugging, once the machine has been built and you can actually test your code.
I have been there for almost 2.5 years now.
What are your thoughts on this?
My boss is a machinist by training and only has a basic/abstract understanding of controls. When I first started he would ask me to quote labor on a job, Electrical Design, Programming, Panel Build and Wiring, and Debugging. He told me to quote based on what I thought it would take me to do it. The first time I quoted I screwed up really badly and severally under quoted labor or at least it took be quite a lot longer to get it all done than I had thought it would. He was none to pleased. So after that I started trying to add in contingency time. Unbeknownst to me at the time he started asking the other controls engineer what he thought of my numbers. So he started coming back to me and telling me to lower my numbers that they were too high and I was sandbagging. He would tell me to lower them and that I need to hit that time. I of course seldom did because well in my opinion it was too low, and I would be creating a cobbled together mess. I have gradually kept lower my quality of work on Programs and Schematics. I gradually got more inline with what he wanted but then I would have projects where I would run in to a major technical problem for example I had one project that I quoted the programming on it as 40 hours. I had issues getting some EthernetIP sensors to communicate reliably with the PLC. I had the vendor which sold us the PLC and the sensors remote in. They had 2 different guys work on it but they couldn't make any progress with it either. I eventually got it figured out by trial and error because the documentation on how the communication was supposed to work was wrong. All of this took an additionally 40 hours. I would like to point out that the PLC and Sensors where spec out by the customer and I had no say in choosing them. The whole time my boss is acting like I am just incompetent because, "problems like this just don't happen."
He eventually came up with this rule which was a "good controls Engineer" should be able to quote a project within 10% on labor every time. Also a "good controls engineer" should be able to write a program offline, and only have no more than 10% of the total of Programming and Debug, be actual Debug. So say you spend 80 hours writing a program offline with no ability to debug it. In his opinion you should only need to spend 8 additional hours debugging, once the machine has been built and you can actually test your code.
I have been there for almost 2.5 years now.
What are your thoughts on this?
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