Training

Vlad Romanov · Dec 13, 2018

ASF said:
I never called myself an expert in everything, nor would I consider myself one. I'd consider myself an expert in a few specific areas, and a "skilled engineer" in a wide range of areas. Your statement that "skilled engineers spend entire careers on narrowly focused aspects of one single PLC platform" is blatantly untrue not just for me, but for the vast majority of those who frequent this forum, based on the extensive and broad range of knowledge I see every day. Ken Roach can give someone intricate detail on a 30-year-old Allen-Bradley PLC one minute, and then turn around and help me interpret a wireshark trace on a Control Logix the next, and then head off to help someone out with a Red Lion application, all before his morning coffee. Geospark will sit down and pen a 2,000 word post on just about any Allen-Bradley related topic you can think of, with enough technotes and cross references to keep you busy for hours. geniusintraining can help you out with parts and solutions for just about any combination of automation equipment you can throw at him. Phil Buchanan runs training courses on Allen-Bradley, Siemens, Omron, Wonderware and Mitsubishi, and has at least passing knowledge on many other brands besides. I'm sure that none of these people would consider themselves "experts in everything", but if we are to agree with your statement, then none of them are skilled engineers either.

Really?
No reason? At all?
I personally can program PLC's and HMI's from Allen-Bradley, Siemens, Modicon, Schneider, Omron, Red Lion, Delta, Panasonic, Eaton, Automation Direct, Pilz, Mitsubishi, IFM, Sick, GE, Unitronics, ranging from the MS-DOS based Siemens S5 through to the most recent version of AB Logix Designer. I can develop SCADA systems in FTView, Wonderware, Citect, WinCC and Ignition. Sure, I'm not equally good at all of them, but I can at the very least get by in them all. And you know what? At my current employer, I have been at some point paid to work on every single one of those brands by our customers. If your employer is happy to tell customers "sorry, we don't have anyone that can help you with that, find someone else", then sure, I guess your employer has no reason to have their team learn 6 platforms. But if you're going to turn to my boss and suggest that my knowledge of more than one PLC brand is of no use to him, he'll laugh in your face.

Sure, there are roles where you only need one very narrow, but very in depth skill set. I'm sure that Tesla employs engineers who know more about battery technology than you or I could ever hope to know, but wouldn't know a VSD if it fell on their head. I'm sure that there are OEMs who develop a very specific type of machine using a very specific type of platform and have engineers who know that specific platform inside and out, but have very little experience outside it. But my observation would be, that's the exception, not the rule. Even within a factory that is exclusively, say, AB, an engineer would be very little use to the company if all they knew was servo motion. They'd most likely be expected to be highly competent across PLC programming on RSLogix 5, RSLogix 500, RSLogix 5000, and in ladder, FBD and ST. They'd be expected to be competent with FTView and PanelView Plus applications. If the site used a different SCADA platform, they'd be expected to be competent across that as well. They'd need to know VFD's, networking (ethernet, devicenet, controlnet, RIO, DH+...), safety systems, and sensors. And that, again, is a site with just AB. The reality is, there are precious few sites that have managed to keep the bean counters in line well enough to have the luxury of only having one brand to deal with. For the rest, the more areas you're "skilled" in, the more valuable you are as an employee. And if you work for a small OEM like me, well, you simply do not have the luxury of specialising in one aspect of one platform and ignoring the rest of the field.

That certainly is a very interesting point of view and you do have some very good points. That being said, my experience in the field was completely different. I've worked with very large companies which always had the luxury to decline equipment if it wasn't built in their system of choice. There was no place for black boxes and third party equipment. As I mentioned earlier, I had a lot of projects tearing out other PLC equipment just to replace it with AB; most companies I've worked with wanted to standardize. That being said, im well versed in mutiple systems and see the value in it, but I've also seen the value in specializing. My original comment about engineers knowing an in-depth field was meant to show that there is a lot to learn and you need to be patient with 6 PLC systems at once. However, regardless of your boss laughing in my face, I'd tell him that purchasing equipment with different systems is a mistake; I stand by that comment.

I'm still trying to learn everything, and love to figure out how other systems work, but I'm far from being an expert in them. Maybe I'm speaking for myself here, but it would be a nightmare to have 6 different platforms at my site. Sure you'd be the only guy that knows that and are by definition "more valuable", but I'd rather bring value by migrating their system to a single platform, teaching electricians to troubleshoot it, being able to hire people who know how to work with it (not a 2 year onboarding) & increase their productivity. But that's just me.... I've seen systems written in assembly running on custom embedded systems that no one can troubleshoot; guaranteed job security right there.

ASF · Dec 13, 2018

Vlad Romanov said:
To the OP
My best advice would be to learn the basics of each platform. If you can go online with each processor, have a backup of all files and know the basics of PLC logic (not even sure what your code is written, but hopefully it's all ladder logic across the many platforms) you should be OK. From that point, you can troubleshoot and start learning about the advanced instructions and how they are integrated into your plant.

Vlad Romanov said:
You should work towards having as much information as possible to facilitate this migration. Make sure you have all PLC files, all the schematics, pictures of what's going where, documents outlining IO.

On the VFD, my guess is that Yaskawa would have an AOP for Allen Bradley which would integrate the same way as the PowerFlex series. That being said, if you're looking to buy new equipment, I'd push to get PowerFlex drives; I don't think that there's much of a cost savings in getting another brand.

I will just take a step back and acknowledge that I don't disagree with everything you say. The advice above I think is quite good with regard to the OP's situation, and I'd endorse it fully.

Perhaps your first (very brief) post was not meant to be taken at quite as literally as I took it. In any case, I've said my piece on that, and I'll try not to distract any further from the actual point of this thread (i.e. helping the OP get up to speed with 6 brands of PLC

)

ASF · Dec 13, 2018

Vlad Romanov said:
That certainly is a very interesting point of view and you do have some very good points. That being said, my experience in the field was completely different. I've worked with very large companies which always had the luxury to decline equipment if it wasn't built in their system of choice. There was no place for black boxes and third party equipment. As I mentioned earlier, I had a lot of projects tearing out other PLC equipment just to replace it with AB; most companies I've worked with wanted to standardize. That being said, im well versed in mutiple systems and see the value in it, but I've also seen the value in specializing. My original comment about engineers knowing an in-depth field was meant to show that there is a lot to learn and you need to be patient with 6 PLC systems at once. However, regardless of your boss laughing in my face, I'd tell him that purchasing equipment with different systems is a mistake; I stand by that comment.

The difference here is that I work for an OEM, not a manufacturer. Most of our clients do standardise on equipment, but of course, they all have different standards. My boss isn't purchasing equipment with different systems, he's selling it - and he's selling the customers their standard equipment, so that they don't end up in exactly the situation you describe. To be able to do that, we have to be able to support all of our clients different site standards.

Vlad Romanov said:
I'm still trying to learn everything, and love to figure out how other systems work, but I'm far from being an expert in them. Maybe I'm speaking for myself here, but it would be a nightmare to have 6 different platforms at my site. Sure you'd be the only guy that knows that and are by definition "more valuable", but I'd rather bring value by migrating their system to a single platform, teaching electricians to troubleshoot it, being able to hire people who know how to work with it (not a 2 year onboarding) & increase their productivity. But that's just me.... I've seen systems written in assembly running on custom embedded systems that no one can troubleshoot; guaranteed job security right there.

You're absolutely right, I've previously worked on a site where they used to standardise and then the bean counters got involved and they brought in several cheap machines with off brand PLC's. It was a disaster. It's not remotely defensible. My comments about being more valuable are more related to being employable in general. If one site shuts down and you can only program one type of PLC, you have to find another site with that PLC to work at. If you can play the field, you have a lot more opportunities available to you. Likewise with an OEM - with the exception of OEM's that do highly specialised machines and only work with one platform, the more cross-platform experience you have, the more valuable you are to an OEM.

Anyway, as I said - I'll try not to derail things any further

Steve Bailey · Dec 13, 2018

I would not be so quick to blame a mixture of PLC brands in one facility on bean counters or clueless management.

In the last five years before I retired I did a lot of work at a GE plant. They gutted an existing building and set up a brand new production line. Being GE, the specs for all equipment going into the plant called for GE PLCs, GE HMIs, GE drives, GE contactors, etc. Some of the OEMs who supplied machinery to the plant pushed back against the specs by asking for extra money to supply their equipment with a PLC model they had never used. If their equipment was otherwise best suited to the application, GE was willing to bend the spec and accept the OEM's preferred brand.
Consequently, in a GE plant where GE hardware was specified, out of sixty-odd PLCs in the facility, there were a handful of Allen Bradley and Siemens PLCs and HMIs. There was an even greater variety in VFDs. The majority were GE or Danfoss, but there were a significant number of Siemens, SEW, Allen Bradley, and Yaskawa.
Now GE is not a huge player in the PLC market, so I'm sure you have a better chance at minimizing the number of brands if you specify Siemens or Allen Bradley, but if an OEM's product is the best tool to do the job you need to do, it might turn out to be easier to train your people on the OEM's preference than to force the OEM to adapt to yours.

geniusintraining · Dec 14, 2018

Vlad Romanov said:
I've worked with very large companies which always had the luxury to decline equipment if it wasn't built in their system of choice.

My last... was a German owned company that would send us Siemens S5 and S7, we bought out our competitors that were all Mitsubishi, anything we had built we would opt for AB and anything I built was AD and WAGO

None of them were small (well mine were) the others were/are big machines the newest S7 has about 20 drives and a few hundred I/O, the Mitsubishi was 6 Q06's with 6 HMI's all networked with CCLink

My point is you need to be diverse, back in the day they had mechanics, electricians, fabricators, etc... now you need to be able to do it all and troubleshooting is part of that

Yes I agree if you work for one OEM and thats all they do is make a machine and service it then you need to know that machine and the PLC thats in it but for most of the readers here thats not the case, with my job now I may get called to help someone with a Omron and a AD in the same afternoon, there are a lot of system integrators/troubleshooters out there that need to know it all

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Vlad Romanov

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Steve Bailey

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geniusintraining

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