Question about 'Stepping on Toes'

This weekend a friend of mine at a plant I used to service called me. (note: I serviced his plant when I worked for my 'former employer').
My friend was unable to access the 'remote control functions' that I had set up at the site. (he used to be able to call in on his cell phone and start up/shutdown/reset faults on the unit). I had implemented and standardized this ability when I worked for my former employer.
My former employer had told him that they weren't going to 'remove' that ability from the unit. But apparently they have.
Since he's my friend I've offered to give him this ability for free. He had been using this feature for some time, and it's aggravating that my former employer removed it after they had told him they woudn't.
The backstory to why they might have done this is this:

In January the site guy that handled the site took leave for a month. His boss told him to turn off his cell phone and that the boss would have all of the site guys called forwarded to his own cell phone. This crucial step NEVER Happened.
Something happened on the unit (alarm/data log full/loss of communication/etc..) and it started calling out. Until the alarm is 'acknowledged' it will keep calling. The last number in the list was the site guys, who's phone was off and who's calls were 'supposed' to have been forwarded to his boss. During the month of January the unit called the site guy 8,000 times. (insert uproarious laughter here)..
Their response... last month I met with the site guy for breakfast. During our conversation he asked me if I still had access to the 'site'. Yep, there was an 'inferrence' that I (the geeky tech guy) had somehow made the unit make all of those calls. So instead of site guys boss admitting that he hadn't forwarded the site guys cell phone calls to him, they 'remove' the remote control function from the unit because 'Obviously' it was I who had done this nefarious thing. All someone had to do was: 1)acknowledge the damned alarm, or 2) reset the unit if it had gotten fouled up. Unfortunately nobody seems to have been watching that site for the entire month.

To be on the up and up when my friend called me I called the 'site guy' and gave him my friend's home number and asked him to get in touch with him concerning this. The site guy called me and said that he didn't know anything about the site any longer and that my friend would have to contact 'the new guy'. My friend called 'the new guy' who said that he wasn't aware of anything, but needed to contact the 'site guy'. I haven't called the unit to test it out. My friend had been successfully doing this for over a year, so I have little doubt that he'd have problems accessing it now. To keep myself distanced from all of this I will not call, nor access the unit until I am on site with my friend (head of maintenance at the plant in question).

I'm heading out there tomorrow to look at the remote control functions and get them working (again) if they had been removed. My friend's company owns the unit, and was told that this ability wouldn't be removed. So I'm going to give it back to him, if it had been.


Anyway, the question is, 'what is the best way to proceed?'

Am I doing the right thing? Anything I should keep in mind?



thanks in advance..

Seems to me the OEM is not providing the customer with the SERVICE they desire. If you have the ability to provide the service, especially since you installed the equipment, and the customer desires you to service the equipment, do it.

The 8000 calls indicates something is working and someone was not doing their job.

A little training and maybe posting written instructions on reseting alarms and the like, might prove helpful too.

Is there any sort of severance or non-competition agreement between you and your former employer? Is the software copyrighted? If you tinker with the software will you put the machine out of warranty?

It sounds as if there may be bad blood developing between the owner and the OEM. Don't get caught in the middle of it. You should get a purchase order from the owner for any changes you make. Even if you do the work for free, you'll have documentation that whatever you did was at the request of the owner.

It does sound like the equipment functioned properly, but that the oem failed to properly operate the equipment. I'll make sure to post some 'documentation' on the control cabinet.

There does seem to be some bad blood developing between the plant and the oem.

the equipment isn't under warranty.

Documentation will be extensive.


If they have removed the remote control functionality from the unit I will know, and take appropriate action, tomorrow.


There is no non-compete clause. In fact I've taken over the day-to-day maintenance of five RTOs at a plant that I went to on a weekly basis when I worked for my former employer. My former employer told the plant that they are 'happy' with my success, and am glad I am working out well. (lol.. at least that's what they're saying to the client). The emails and conversations I've had with my former employer paint a slightly different picture. LOL... c'est la vie!

When you say "the site guy" do you mean tech support at the OEM? So you're saying that your former employer's team has changed and possibly somebody there removed the remote access capability?

FWIW, I agree with Steve. Since there's no NC agreement, get a PO signed by your friend, or by his boss (operations manager?) so that this remains on the up and up. If your friend can't get his company to agree to the change (i.e., PO) I wouldn't make it.

This is going to cause the SW to be unsynched with the current version your former employer has. Depending on the industry, that can be a Big Deal; at the least, it's going to be a headache if this company contacts your former employer for support in future, so you should do this on a PO, leave them updated source code, and either recommend in writing that they forward to your former employer or do it yourself as part of the update.

PS... this assumes that the source code is available at the plant. If you're doing this off a bootleg copy of your own, then not only no, but Hell No! <lol>

Paul T said:

When you say "the site guy" do you mean tech support at the OEM? So you're saying that your former employer's team has changed and possibly somebody there removed the remote access capability?

FWIW, I agree with Steve. Since there's no NC agreement, get a PO signed by your friend, or by his boss (operations manager?) so that this remains on the up and up. If your friend can't get his company to agree to the change (i.e., PO) I wouldn't make it.

This is going to cause the SW to be unsynched with the current version your former employer has. Depending on the industry, that can be a Big Deal; at the least, it's going to be a headache if this company contacts your former employer for support in future, so you should do this on a PO, leave them updated source code, and either recommend in writing that they forward to your former employer or do it yourself as part of the update.

PS... this assumes that the source code is available at the plant. If you're doing this off a bootleg copy of your own, then not only no, but Hell No! <lol>

Click to expand...

.

LOL.. thanks..

The change will be on an autodialer. It monitors an AB plc 5/20 looking at bit status. Modifications to it won't affect anything.
If I need to redo the plc code, that's also not a problem. I'll just update the version I have with the 'current' version. In fact the current version should be on site.

It's going to be an interesting day to say the least.


Thanks!!!

Russ wrote:

The change will be on an autodialer.

Click to expand...

Ah. I was thinking you had an HMI with an integral call-out that had been programmed and now wasn't. Yeah, if they disconnected the cable to the autodialer how come nobody plugged it back in? <heh>
And if this is a custom machine so that the customer owns the code then less concern about SW mods- I was thinking "XYZ Corp Model-123 Do-it-all-Machine."

I still think that you should have some customer cover on changing the existing setup. But then, I've been burned in the past and I now work for a medical device mfgr, so I am more skittish than I used to be. It's true there is a wide range of tolerance on this. A couple of years ago, I was working for an OEM that did water treatment systems. Our skid kept blowing transducers, and I got sent to check it out. I traced it to the DC supply wiring in a custom panel (supplied by a local integrator) that was running the floor, including our skids. I reported this back and got reamed out for not troubleshooting the panel and correcting it on the spot. This was definitely a culture conflict- my history has been that if it's the other guy's box, you call him to fix it. Especially since this was months (a year?) after startup and signoff.

Good luck- like you said, should be an interesting day!