Sliver
Member
I've been running into an interesting dilemma.
A production engineer comes to my boss and tells him he wants this PLC controlled machine to do something completely new, to achieve this production/quality goal.
My boss tells me the score and I go through the process of determining what I am being asked to do and what is actually needed.
In this case these are very different and the engineer is not understanding my points so after much debate my boss says, "Never mind if it will do what he needs, make it do what he wants."
Whenever I take on a major logic rewrite I want to clean things up, make wholesale changes if required, add new features that will improve ease of use by operators and maintenance.
I tend to lean towards Terry's idea of KISS. Put as much thought and complexity into the program to make the process work as smoothly as possible. If a fault occurs display the fault as specifically and clearly as possible. Finally make the program as structured and documented as practical to allow the next guy (and myself in 5 years) to understand the intent of the logic.
Now my stumbling block is that some of the operators who dispise change of any kind, are giving me a hard time because the HMI has changed to match the new improved features.
Does anyone else have this experience and what can a union electrician like me do to help influence the powers that be on one hand and deal with the least understanding operators on the other? (Being a somewhat technically oriented person a contributing factor may be a certain lack of tact when dealing with closeminded people.)
Brian.
A production engineer comes to my boss and tells him he wants this PLC controlled machine to do something completely new, to achieve this production/quality goal.
My boss tells me the score and I go through the process of determining what I am being asked to do and what is actually needed.
In this case these are very different and the engineer is not understanding my points so after much debate my boss says, "Never mind if it will do what he needs, make it do what he wants."
Whenever I take on a major logic rewrite I want to clean things up, make wholesale changes if required, add new features that will improve ease of use by operators and maintenance.
I tend to lean towards Terry's idea of KISS. Put as much thought and complexity into the program to make the process work as smoothly as possible. If a fault occurs display the fault as specifically and clearly as possible. Finally make the program as structured and documented as practical to allow the next guy (and myself in 5 years) to understand the intent of the logic.
Now my stumbling block is that some of the operators who dispise change of any kind, are giving me a hard time because the HMI has changed to match the new improved features.
Does anyone else have this experience and what can a union electrician like me do to help influence the powers that be on one hand and deal with the least understanding operators on the other? (Being a somewhat technically oriented person a contributing factor may be a certain lack of tact when dealing with closeminded people.)
Brian.
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