Talking PLC

[S7Guy]

Sure, that takes effort, a lot of effort. Are you (nay-sayers) afraid of work?.........

Oh... yeah, well... I understand... you don't have time for this. Well, like it or not, this is gonna come up and bite you on the a$$. It's gonna happen. Like it or not, it's gonna happen!

I don't think the people here are afraid of work. I don't even find this task particularly difficult. If there was a market out there, I'd start doing it tomorrow. But I tend to think that future development efforts will continue to move operators away from the process, not closer to it.

Not to mention that most plants are already noisy enough without machines talking too.

 

[Terry Woods]

Git...

I don't "git" your question?

In my view, the PLC sends a problem-message plus an associated urgency-level to the PC-based HMI.

The verbal message is delivered from the HMI Audio-Package with the appropriate level of urgency.

Please explain your question.

 

[Terry Woods]

Oh, my God...

DAMN, you S7Guy, you pushed a really BIG button!

I dread the day when operators are no longer needed... yeah, I know it's coming... but, if so, then, eventually, there will be no one making money to buy the products produced by those processes!

Then what? Don't you understand? What will happen to the "Capitalist Circle"???

I dare ANY of you to provide an answer to that question! That is, an answer that will perpetuate the Capitalist Circle, or Model. At least, here in the States. If you can't perpetuate it here, in the States, then you can't perpetuate it anywhere!

If you can't answer the question, then I wonder, are you really only interested in your own well being; despite the welfare of your children, and the welfare of their children?

DAMN IT TO HELL! THIS IS WHERE IT IS LEADING!!!

DON'T YOU SEE???

That is EXACTLY why I NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, try to program to eliminate operator positions!

I can't do it! I can't do it because I can clearly see where that leads!

I only program to make the operators look better!

Don't you have kids??? Where in the hell are they going to work? Burger King???

Does anybody understand at all???

 

[geniusintraining]

Terry,

Why have the PLC tell the operator to do this and do that?...why not have the PLC/"(the Robot (LIS), HAL (SO-2001), and DATA (ST-TNG)" do it instead?

it's like the factory of the future...a man and a dog...the man is there to feed the dog...and the dog is there to keep the man away from the equipment...

I was being sarcastic...if you know what needs to be done (in the CPU) then do it with the robot, why even let the human race have a chance of screwing it up..

Do you remember when lis, hal, etc...they were just dreams..they are old news now

I got this off Mr.PLC ASIMO its not far-a-way (its here, now), look at what we can do, have done in the past 20years...


I'm tellin ya...The U.N. will be ruling the world and robotics will be ruling the economy...

Who is the most powerfull person in the world???? Bush?? not even close..

Its the one that holds the money..it was Greenspan now it's Bernanke...Soon the economy will be ran by forcast of computers... Thats where the "Dog and the Man" theory come into play.. or like Bradley's post MANNA, so if robotics will be ruling the economy then they are the most powerful


EDIT: Terry let's go get a beer...MGD?...my treat..this is the only bad thing about the internet....

.

 

[Togadude]

Oh, my God...

DAMN, you S7Guy, you pushed a really BIG button!

I dread the day when operators are no longer needed... yeah, I know it's coming... but, if so, then, eventually, there will be no one making money to buy the products produced by those processes!

Then what? Don't you understand? What will happen to the "Capitalist Circle"???

I dare ANY of you to provide an answer to that question! That is, an answer that will perpetuate the Capitalist Circle, or Model. At least, here in the States. If you can't perpetuate it here, in the States, then you can't perpetuate it anywhere!

If you can't answer the question, then I wonder, are you really only interested in your own well being; despite the welfare of your children, and the welfare of their children?

DAMN IT TO HELL! THIS IS WHERE IT IS LEADING!!!

DON'T YOU SEE???

That is EXACTLY why I NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, try to program to eliminate operator positions!

I can't do it! I can't do it because I can clearly see where that leads!

I only program to make the operators look better!

Don't you have kids??? Where in the hell are they going to work? Burger King???

Does anybody understand at all???

I beg to differ. There will always be operator type jobs. Say they build robots to do what an operator does. Who will build thoes robots? there will always be nuts and bolts that need to be turned. Hell, alot of electrical cabinets from OEM's arent even wired by electricians. Maybe it will create more jobs...


Using history as an example, I think its pretty safe to say that "unskilled labor" will always be needed. I'm sure they feared the same when the processes started getting automated.

 

[S7Guy]

Oh, my God...

DAMN, you S7Guy, you pushed a really BIG button!

I dread the day when operators are no longer needed... yeah, I know it's coming... but, if so, then, eventually, there will be no one making money to buy the products produced by those processes!

That's nonsense.

Then what? Don't you understand? What will happen to the "Capitalist Circle"???

I dare ANY of you to provide an answer to that question! That is, an answer that will perpetuate the Capitalist Circle, or Model. At least, here in the States. If you can't perpetuate it here, in the States, then you can't perpetuate it anywhere!

All I can tell you is that we are better off than we have ever been at any time in history. I'm not to worried about the Capitalist Circle thing collapsing.

If you can't answer the question, then I wonder, are you really only interested in your own well being; despite the welfare of your children, and the welfare of their children?

DAMN IT TO HELL! THIS IS WHERE IT IS LEADING!!!

DON'T YOU SEE???

Sure, I see.

That is EXACTLY why I NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, try to program to eliminate operator positions!

Did I ever say that operators could/would/should be eliminated? I said they would be moved further away from the process. As technology grows, we won't need something that tells the operator to "go check something". It will check it itself and send a report to the operator who is sitting in an office somewhere.

I can't do it! I can't do it because I can clearly see where that leads!

I only program to make the operators look better!

I wouldn't put that on your business card if you plan on going on your own.

I only program to make the process run safer, more reliably and more efficiently. Sometime the result is fewer operators, and sometimes it isn't.

Don't you have kids??? Where in the hell are they going to work? Burger King???

Does anybody understand at all???

I have four kids, and they are doing fine. They have never worked at Burger King, and never will. And they won't need someone writing a program a certain way so they can have a job.

 

[geniusintraining]

What will happen to the "Capitalist Circle"???

I dare ANY of you to provide an answer to that question!

It turns into a communist square...if left unmanaged....

 

[BobB]

Back to the original question, Omron have had a voice card available for about 6-8 years. Do not know if they have sold too many but they are available.

 

[Hundikoer]

I have seen Mitsubishi voice card (in catalog of course...)

 

[cntrlfrk]

I agree with S7GUY, I don't think the operators will ever be eliminated (no matter how much they think that is my goal) I always design a process or program with the intention to make the operators job as easy as possible.

This gives the operator more time to pay attention to detail and monitor things more closely and learn the process more. Of course you need to hire operators that will make good use of that time.

The whole premise of automation is repeatability. I don't know how many times I've helped troubleshoot a process issue only to find out that one operator was doing things differently than another and the instrumentation/ automation was not in place to monitor or control properly. Some of this is the result of training, some of it is short-cutting, some is an operation change that the operator may have thought was helping and was possibly causing another problem down the line.

The plant I currently work in is like many others and strangled with employee overhead. 10 years or so ago they began increasing automation but never reduced manpower so we are now barely able to compete with overseas businesses. The solution is either to increase efficiency, to reduce costs, or do nothing and lose market share and close the doors.

Contrary to the global conspiracy theories, robots are never going to take over the world. I can reduce overhead, increase repeatability in product quality, reduce downtime, and improve safety all through proper automation. This is what we do. This is what this entire industry was envisioned to do.

As for talking PLC's. I could see voices instead of alarm notifications, but in reality the operator should know what to do. Personally, I would go insane if every time I added a rung, a voice said "Add Bit" then said, "Add Condition" then maybe "Add Coil". That to me is scarier than global robot domination.

 

[Johnny T]

I can't see a day when operators would be obselete.. A PLC can tell you whats wrong to a degree but it can't physically reach into a machine and un-jam a box or mop up a smashed bottle or whatever...

I do, however, think that most factories have too many operators.. but that's a different thread altogether..

As for talking modules they may have a place in certain industries under certain conditions, however, the majority of my work is in the bottling industry and you can't hear yourself talk in one of those factories let alone a HMI wittering away at you.

There would also be the language barriers to get over.. if you are trying to create a generic HMI you can use standard symbols that anyone from any country understands.. the same can't be said if the thing is talking to you...

 

[Binaural]

The first sentence should be "WARNING, WILL ROBINSON!!"

Hahaha, that got a big laugh out of me

Verbal annuciators suck, and are typically the first thing operators want to turn off or down. They do attract attention well, but that only applies if used sparingly.

I used to be an acoustic engineer, and most factory environments are not exactly designed for high speech intelligibility, especially if you are well away from the console. Hard surfaces, large room volumes, high ambient noise levels are all conspiring against you. And if your operators miss an announcement, they don't necessarily know that they have to do something unless you repeat the message at intervals. And if you have a room full of machines speaking their announcements, you are occasionally going to get them talking over each other. Nothing much wrong with the old SCADA or HMI as an information presenter, I reckon.

Incidentally, some high-end PC motherboards have a "speak error" function where instead of a series of beeps that has to be interpreted during a problem startup. They haven't taken over the market just yet, or at least they hadn't last time I was looking for a new motherboard!