Water and Sewer plant. New PLC and scada system

Saffa · Sep 22, 2015

JesperMP said:
Meaning: If you are willing to pay extra money, they will support you ? If not, you are f****d ?
And the distributor is supposed to help, not Wonderware themselves !?
And I am supposing the "in support" means you have to continue paying.

My question is: Why do people accept such conditions ? Have they been suckered into buying the product before being aware of the total costs over the long run ?

I don't know about you, but I like to get paid when i provide a service. I do agree that some amount of free support should be provided especially during the initial stages of deployment. But how can you expect any supplier to provide support a decade after the initial sale? And i suppose you want 10 years of software upgrades and features for free too? Typically you're buying a software product as a once off. There's no additional sales of spare parts, replacements etc.

The local distributor here supports the product because no client wants to have to wait until 9pm to make a phone call to the states / wherever. Bit difficult to do a site visit that requires a 14 hour flight.

I'm quite happy paying my (comparatively small) annual maintenence fee for the peace of mind that it brings. But maybe that's just me.

JesperMP · Sep 22, 2015

You are implying things I never said.

Saffa said:
I do agree that some amount of free support should be provided especially during the initial stages of deployment. But how can you expect any supplier to provide support a decade after the initial sale?

The industry standard is to provide free support for equipment, as long as it is recent and hasn't entered obsolescense.
It is the industry standard to warn customers in advance before product is no longer supported.
It is the industry standard to give customers a path to continue, even if they are using obsolete products, such as a migration path. This is also a way to retain existing customers.

And it is the industry standard to provide free support within normal business hours. A vendor can decide if he provide support outside business hours, and if it should be free or paid for.

I also didnt imply that a vendor is required to provide support for beginners. It is a good practice though, to provide starter guides and sample documentation. It is reassuring for potential new customers.

And I didnt imply that a vendor is required to provide application support. It is good idea to do so anyway (if you are competent to do so !), and potential customers are usually willing to pay for this support. It is also a way to show customers that you are a real player and not just a me-too.

All of the above is what my company does for our customers (24/7 that is), and that is what we expect from our sub-suppliers.

Saffa said:
I'm quite happy paying my (comparatively small) annual maintenence fee for the peace of mind that it brings.

Yeah, it is fine. But when one starts out chosing an automation brand, one should be informed about all costs. For some automation vendors that I know, the cost of their support means that the long-term costs are doubled (!) or more than doubled (!!).

Paullys50 · Sep 22, 2015

Personally I see two sides to the 'support' issue. That is PLC side and the SCADA side.

On the PLC side, if you have a lot of PLCs and different vendors putting in equipment and such I think paying for support is justified. Say your plant has mostly AB PLCs and such. Well, paying to keep your Studio5000 up-to-date and paying to access technical support help AB maintain their distribution network. Which could save your *** some day. Gripe about AB and the price all you want but nobody has a better distribution network and access to hardware in a short amount of time than AB (here in the US). I've had 20 year old CRTs **** out on a weekend for a customer, and 6-8 hours a courier arrives at 2 am with a replacement part hand delivered to me. Off to install it before their 6 am milk delivery.

That service costs a bunch of money too, but better than downtime. Hard to argue that they should have stocked a spare part on their shelve, after all the original lasted 20 years. So the masses paying for technical support and service is almost an insurance policy on some level for almost instant hardware availability.

My biggest gripe with paying for technical support is for SCADA systems. Typically once those are installed nobody is applying updates on a regular basis. So to pay 15-20% yearly to have support for SCADA gets out of hand, especially on high-dollar SCADA systems and a large install. And usually the facility doesn't have the personal trained to handle large updates like. Even if they do, it's risky (System Platform?? FTView SE??) anyone updating those without cringing?

So on the SCADA side, if your licensing costs where $100K, and you pay $15-20k yearly to be 'in support' and you never use it because you don't update the software and/or you go to the SI that put in the software, the SCADA manufacture is making double the money as the SI is paying for support with their development agreement. Then if you are a large company, and you have the same SCADA across many plants you're pretty much committed.

I was recently working with a large company which have $1 million+ in Wonderware Licensing. They are paying what, another $200K+ on a yearly basis for 'support'. And they aren't happy with it. But who is gonna take the bullet and say "I think we need to abandon our $1-2 million dollar investment and go a different route".

kwade · Sep 22, 2015

Pressing on with the off-topic nature of this thread...
About 15 years ago, Rockwell changed the techconnect plan from software license installs to hardware installs. I phoned our local rep and asked what the new support fee would be.
We would be going from 3 RSLogix500 licenses to about 25-35 PLCs.
My quoted support price went from ~$2000 to ~$20000.

I balked and said that we didn't need that level of support.
The rep said that (s)he would check and get back in touch with me.
The next support quote was ~$2500.

asterof · Sep 24, 2015

Paully's5.0 said:
I will always endorse Inductive Automation's Ignition product for every SCADA application until I find a reason someone else is better.

Plenty of water district case studies:
https://inductiveautomation.com/scada-software-solutions/casestudies

With 7.8 being released with the new reporting system, should be quite an enhancement to an already great product.

No offense but Inductive Automations Ignition software is riddled with bugs. I just found three more a few weeks ago
And they have no CTRL-ALT-DEL or Alt-F4 lock outs so operators
can drop the system. It has no symbols, you must purchase the symbol factory to get any animated objects. We also just yanked a system out of a water treatment plant because the Java environment would keep crashing the OS.
Also when developing the animated graphics they animate even in development mode, so if you have an animation that makes an object invisible, guess what, it is now invisible until the tag turns it visible, what a hassle.
We installed iFix and they are much happier.

Saffa · Sep 24, 2015

Like anything, it probably also comes down to implementation. I've just been looking at an iFix deployment that is generating 200MB a day of alarm logs. Trends don't work, graphics are shocking. I'm amazed anyone can use it.

Is iFIX a terrible product? Definitely not. Can it be implemented poorly? Hell yes!

Ignition seems like a good system in many circumstances. I've only tried it on small test systems to get familiarity with it but haven't found anything I didn't like?

If Java is crashing the OS.. is their OS and Java up to date and in line with the requirements for Ignition?

I haven't found many SCADA packages where you get any symbol library worth using with the base package. Unless you like spinning pumps and all the stuff that no good system should make use of.

JesperMP · Sep 24, 2015

asterof said:
And they have no CTRL-ALT-DEL or Alt-F4 lock outs so operators can drop the system.
[..]
We also just yanked a system out of a water treatment plant because the Java environment would keep crashing the OS.

Sounds to me that you are talking about the need for locking task-switching on the client, and crashing the client, not the server.
If that is the case, you just pointed out an advantage of a server/client system over more traditional systems.

asterof · Sep 24, 2015

Saffa said:
Like anything, it probably also comes down to implementation. I've just been looking at an iFix deployment that is generating 200MB a day of alarm logs. Trends don't work, graphics are shocking. I'm amazed anyone can use it.

Is iFIX a terrible product? Definitely not. Can it be implemented poorly? Hell yes!

I must admit, I have seen some really poor implemented iFix
apps out there, memory loss due to poorly written VBA scripts
are the biggest issue

Saffa · Sep 24, 2015

To quote Spiderman's dad, with great power comes great responsibility.

IFix has great power. Unfortunately not everyone is a great programmer.

Its not always the most appropriate system I think. Something like classic Intouch, I could teach just about anyone to make simple changes. With iFIX, I'm not even confident doing it myself yet.

Paullys50 · Sep 24, 2015

asterof said:
No offense but Inductive Automations Ignition software is riddled with bugs. I just found three more a few weeks ago
And they have no CTRL-ALT-DEL or Alt-F4 lock outs so operators
can drop the system. It has no symbols, you must purchase the symbol factory to get any animated objects. We also just yanked a system out of a water treatment plant because the Java environment would keep crashing the OS.
Also when developing the animated graphics they animate even in development mode, so if you have an animation that makes an object invisible, guess what, it is now invisible until the tag turns it visible, what a hassle.
We installed iFix and they are much happier.

No offense taken, everyone will have a preference. All SCADA products have bugs. I have ran into them with Wonderware and Rockwell products and understand they occur with Ignition too. At least with Ignition bug fixes are usually a quicker fix and less risky to update the software then say tying to update System Platform or FTView SE on a running plant. My code that I write will have bugs in it at times, so I can't assume software that I use won't have bugs too.

CTRL-ALT-DEL, /ALF-F4 lockouts could be a feature request I'm sure. Depending on what else is on the client computer it's debatable if those functions are even needed. So an operator closes it? They can re-open it. So they do CTRL-ALT-DEL, so they power off the computer. They can recover w/o issue.

As for the animation, I prefer how Ignition handles it, especially if you get into screens/windows that layer everything. Much easier to identify the layers and see the functionality than seeing it all and trying to move the layers around to access what you want to change and align it all back up. Easy enough to toggle the visibility property if you need to see it during development. However, I typically use the enable property so the object is always visible and you know the functionality is there. So I consider that a designer preference and not a product flaw.

You pay for Symbol Factory on every SCADA product. They license it and charge for it. With Ignition you have the option not to purchase it. The others include it, and you did pay for it even if it isn't a line item on the invoice.

Can't comment on the Java/OS crashing.

Because of our heavy usage of databases in the SCADA system, Ignition just makes life easier. I don't miss ODBC connections and constant scripting in the SCADA to insert/retrieve data from a DB.

Glad you're happy with iFix and respect your position on IA. If iFix makes you money, great. If FTView SE makes you money, great. If AdvancedHMI makes you money, that's great too.

BobB · Sep 25, 2015

Citect has a symbol set that costs nothing and in my view is better than Symbol Factory although not as extensive. I also pinch symbols from other packages such as PLC HMI packages - except Red Lion - that uses the horrible one! Yuck! If I need something different I make my own.

FLAengineer · Sep 30, 2015

one approach....

Quote: "Now since this is at a Correctional Center it is Federal Government not local so we probably need to pick a system from the main stream guys as opposed to some of the nice options I've seen on here such as Advanced HMI. but as the prints won't be out till new year I'm really just doing some research right now. Thank you in advance. "

Where I work here (south Florida) we have been trying to standardize on one PLC Brand (Allen Bradley) and one HMI for our Water and Wastewater Treatment Plants and Pump Station Monitoring (Citect) here is what I would do: Research online any other contracts that this arm of the government (or province) has let out for similar work in the past, oh say five years. They may be trying to standardize the PLC/HMI in their correctional facilities and there may be a similar contract that they awarded a few years ago that could give you a head start on bidding this contract.

DwSoFt · Sep 30, 2015

FLAengineer said:
Quote: "Now since this is at a Correctional Center it is Federal Government not local so we probably need to pick a system from the main stream guys as opposed to some of the nice options I've seen on here such as Advanced HMI. but as the prints won't be out till new year I'm really just doing some research right now. Thank you in advance. "

Where I work here (south Florida) we have been trying to standardize on one PLC Brand (Allen Bradley) and one HMI for our Water and Wastewater Treatment Plants and Pump Station Monitoring (Citect) here is what I would do: Research online any other contracts that this arm of the government (or province) has let out for similar work in the past, oh say five years. They may be trying to standardize the PLC/HMI in their correctional facilities and there may be a similar contract that they awarded a few years ago that could give you a head start on bidding this contract.

Very good Information. And thank you.for getting it back on track. I have my homework ahead of me. Thank you.

Water and Sewer plant. New PLC and scada system

Saffa

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JesperMP

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Paullys50

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kwade

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asterof

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Saffa

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JesperMP

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asterof

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Saffa

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Paullys50

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BobB

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FLAengineer

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DwSoFt

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