One man show - Help needed to run the show

Dear All,
I run a small automation business for almost 5 years now. I am the only person in my office doing PLC programming except for one accountant cum secretary cum office boy.

I go for sales and once i get a job i go for programming.

I have visited numerous customer but was unable to follow with them with all my quotes.

some customers call me and i go and visit their plant and as per that i give them a quote and then next day i visit some other customer and things go on. but i donot have any method to follow with the customer to whom i gave a qoute. as i am the only guy until my customer responds with a purchase order or asks for more details.

Sometimes i get only spares order for input or output card. In that case i buy that PLC from some trading agents in US or UK or european countries and give it to my customer. Sometimes the local agents directly meets my customer and he would also be submitting his quote. In that case i naturally lose my orders.Once i lose my order i look for another source to procure the same card at a lesser price so that i can make some money. I am always in search of some source to buy these PLC cards. I used to buy from UK, Germany and wherever. because i could not get it locally from my own country with good price. I am not authorised system integrator nor authorised agent. So mostly i compete with the authorised system integrators / agents in my own country.

I have experience in AB PLC and Texas instruments PLC. But now concentrate mainly on AB PLC.

Sometime to compete with the local system integrator i give my quote for a very less margin. In my quote i accept to provide training, commissioning, wiring, documentation etc. but once taking a order i donot find any worry. But at execution stage i face lots of problem.
example i spend so much time on a single customer to complete what i have said in my qoute. In the end i loose days and money and almost i am sleepless till i complete my job.

In this four years i have did wiring,programming, materil delivery, preparing documentation and everything for every single customer. to do this all by myself i spend so much time. And by that i am unable to concentrate on the next customer and naturally i donot even have time to quote to other customer and by which i have lost so much orders.

One help that i thought of asking to you all for a long time but never had time to write this much is as below

As i said i do every thing on my own.(even though i donot know manything i had learnt from scratch because i need to do them to get my money).

One thing that i want is to prepare a wiring diagram on my own. I have autocad 2000 software and i spend hours and hours to make a drawing. I donot know autocad and i use only line instruction to create my entire drawing. I donot have time and money to learn autocad for electrical use.

do you recommend any software that i can use to prepare my I/O diagrams with most of Allen bradley PLC. Is that cheap. can you please let me know how you all create wiring diagram and what software do you all use. Is there any rules that you follow to make a drawing.example terminal numbering , placing of parts at which place inside the panels etc.

Most of the job that i carried out are Relay or obsolete PLC replacement by which i mostly use existing Panel.

Most of my customer wants an as built drawing but they donot worry them to look or follow some standards. As long as they could understand my drawing. so in that ways i run my business for past 4 years. But i do want to improve my own image and our company image by providing our customer feel that our company is O.K company and that they should feel happy to give me repeat business.

I donot want our company to look more professional but i just want to make my customer that i can also do the same job.

I just want to write more about the difficulties that i face but iam short of words. I thought that you might feel bored after reading all those stuffs. I hope i could communicate what i want from all you guys.

As simple. for my survival.I need your help.

Thanking you all for your valuable time

velly again

Its me again. I just want to add more to the above post.

Sometimes i have made some good profit and sometime(mostly) loss.

I am unable to extract my competitions price from my customer and instead quote very less on PLC project to get the job at any cost.
While executing the job the customer gets closer to me and i used to ask my customer on what basis he selected my quote.
He used to tell me that my price so cheap? I realy donot want to repeat that. I too want to make good money, but to do that i should now how much my competitor has quoted. If its a known customer i some how get that information but if that is the first time customer i really face a problem to ask pricing from him.

Also most of the time my customer manipulates me. Being a techie i not good at managing people and most of the people easily screw me up.

I also need to learn on how to tackle people. Like the way of approaching different people at different sites.

I have seen so much of my competitor change like a cameleon. But i am unable to change like a cameleon. Because i dont have any body to get advice.

Even there where situation on how to prepare a quote while starting the company. I wanted to ask somebody but felt getting exposed that i donot know anything.

By which i really donot have any good friend or advisor as i always fear of getting exposed or that person might know that i donot know things.

Finally i end up in sleepless nights.

I also ended up in so many health related problems during this 4 years period which i belive is due to continues tension and pressure always. I am also not married and also donot get any of emotional support.

I have friends but not in my field. they are into computer science, accountancy , airline etc. But in no way they could understand my problem.

O.k thats it for now.

thanks again

velly again

Sorry i think i forgot to ask what i need the most.

I just want to run the show on my own but want to get fully equiped so that i can meet my job.

Equiped in the sense.
1. complete my project fast
2. prepare decent wiring diagram ( also fast) to do that i need your help on recomending a good but not so expensive software
3. communication skills
4. prepare good quotation. I think even my quotes doesnot look attractive.

I am not in americas/europe. i am from an asian country.

i think thats all.

I'll comment on the second half of your "sleepless nights".

First of all you gotta COVER YOUR A**!!! Make up a quote and make sure you spell it out.

Attached is a sample quote I did. FOUR YEARS ago when I did this stuff by myself, I don't work by myself anymore, so I don't mind sharing some OLD QUOTES I did.

Look at my quote. Read through it, you'll notice that I define CLEARLY what my responisiblies are and what the CUSTOMER responisblites are. This is your LIFE LINE. Hold your ground after they agree to a written quote. DO not let any customer PUSH you around. They will all try and suck every last drop of money out of you that you did not clearly define up front. If the scope of the project is not in the quote, then UP CHARGE them for. If you get in a situation that you do not want to do something or know that you did not quote that, always refer to your QUOTE. The quote is the single most inportant piece of documentation between you and those pesky hard case customers that will try and get anything from you for nothing. I've been in this situation time and time again. Most of the experts here that are machine builders will tell you the same thing.

Check out the quote, make sure you DEFINE everything you can think of. Leave yourself an OUT in your quotes. Especiality DEFINE RATE! I dunno how many times a customer will ask that your machine has to run at 2 products per second, then I pull out the quote and say, I only agreed on 3 products per second..etc...RATE must be defined with your programming etc...

PS: i did not get this job. Someone else in the UK did. Make more sense, why would I travel from USA to UK to do this job? But I quoted it anyway because I was asked.

There is also a copy of the DWG layout I did.

Very nice proposal, Chako. About the only thing I do differently is adding a clause about who owns any logic or intellectual prpoperty.

Velly, you have to make some fundamental decisions:

1) Are you creating a business, or are you creating a job? One implies growth, one implies income.

2) What income level do you need to sustain growth, or to sustain yourself? What percentage of billable hours can you reasonably expect? Look at the last five years analytically. For example, when you have work you aren't selling, so you have dead time at the end of each project. How many billable hours did you have each year? If you don't have that data, kick yourself AND your accountant/secretary in the rump.

3) Based on the above, set your hourly rate, and build a lot of extra hours in your proposal to cover contingencies. Price your projects on that basis. Why should your competitors set your income level? If you can do a job for less and still make your income target because you are more efficient, then don't worry about leaving money on the table. If you are higher priced than a competitor, don't cut your price just to get the job. If you are working your butt off and not making a living, it isn't a good price! (I never argue with those who charge less than I do - they know what their work is worth!)

4) Are you better off learning CAD, or are you better off running your business and doing what you're good at while paying someone else to do drawings and other tasks for which you may be over-qualified?

5) Are you really cut out to be a consultant or an entrepreneur? Is your wife? If the stress is getting to you, maybe it is time to re-think the choice. When I started out, I found the pressure exhilirating, but I always worried about the things my wife and family were missing. Fortunately, they were always able to reassure me that those things weren't as important to them as I feared!

Take a cold hard look in the mirror, set your targets, and then stick to them.

1. be realistic
do not buy things you can maybe use.
ask the client if he has equipment and / or software for you.

i give the client everything i have made for him.after payment off course.
i do charge by the hour as this is for both parties the best.
i am not the cheapest never. however i do not lie to him ever.

i have only 10 % change on a new job the rest is waisting time.
i do make proposals for client but only very small ones as they are used against me even if it is secret and copyright.
ask the client to work for you as he has a problem you can solve.
if client works for you he will be comitted to you.

i do know asian market is very different, they want to be on first rang for no money and you do it for friends.

Very nice proposal, Chako. About the only thing I do differently is adding a clause about who owns any logic or intellectual prpoperty.

Click to expand...

Thank you!

Generally I come from the school that if a customer pays for the design, he shall OWN everything. So no need for me to fight about that. Normally the logic that is written for the machine is nothing that is a trade secret. Any one of you here on the board can write the logic so it's not a big deal or should go as far as copyrighting it. Just them having an orginal copy is good enough for my business.

If I was writing some code for a "process" that was never done before, say some sort of code that required a mixing batch, then "YES" that would be a trade secret, and I would never release or share that with anyone. But if I wrote logic to trigger a camera, the camera told me if it was pass or fail, then there is no need for me to copyright my own code, and I 99% of the companies out there won't bother with that either. In 10 years of writting machine logic for companies, I haven't found one that "protected" it's logic that was developed. Probablly like I say, anyone can do it like me, they might even write the code better.

Oh...as far as your AutoCad question, you can download some Symbols that will make your drawings go faster:

http://forum.mrplc.com/index.php?&act=Downloads&CODE=02&id=146

It's FREE by the way. Follow the direction to install it into your AutoCad drawing software.

Tomorrow, I'll try and remember to post some Example Drawing Sets so you can see those. I don't have any drawings with me right now.

Where I work now the PE uses pre-made forms to create drawings..ie has a form with an Input card (8, 16, or 32) then adds the inputs to that form as needed. The same for output cards. He also has pre-formed control pages that show single phase or 3 phase input with and without control transformers then adds pre-made blocks to them to represent items like 24vdc power supplies, plc, master control relay etc. Takes a little time to make some items but in the long run you can just open the form then add what is needed as needed.

There was as addon product created by VIA that made AutoCAD more user friendly for electrical work. I know Autodesk bought it and I think its now sold as AutoCAD Electrical:http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=3560053

There is also AutomationStudio: http://www.automationstudio.com/ that was designed to be an all in one program...ie electrical, hydraulic, pneumatic, electrical, plc, bill of materials and more.

Neither of the second 2 choices are cheap but may be worth looking into.

Thanks

thanks for your comment:

Thanks for your quotation. It did infact give me some idea that i need to spend lots of time to prepare quote. I actually spend the least time in preparing the quote.Now i will reverse that.

One more thing that i want to add is that here most of the job that we do here are quoted on lumpsum price and not in hourly or per day charges.

Like suppose my customer shows me an machine fitted with relays or obsolete PLC then he will ask me to send my quote to replace the obsolete PLC or relay with my PLC.

In that he does not provide man power.
If i am allowed to use the existing panel. then i can use the existing transformer, power supply etc. thats what he provides.

He wants me a quote which will do his requirement of changing the old/obsolete PLC with new PLC and the new PLC should work as per old logic.

He also provides me the old relay wiring diagram. But he expects me to quote for the complete job.

Last time i submitted a quote for supply of Micrologix 1500 PLC with 4 Analog input , 12 Digital input and 28 Digital output to replace Relay logic done with timers , counters and loop controllers.

My scope where the below:
1. Removal of existing PLC or relay from existing panel.
2. Install my new ML1500
3. Wire inputs & outputs to the ML1500
4. Write ladder logic
5. Test my ladder logic/debug ...to make the program work as per existing Relay logic.
6. Give training to engineers to maintain the new system.

I roughly expected that i could spend 7 days at customer site to do my installation, commissioning , testig & training. Like one day to remove existing relay and install new PLC. then the next three day for wiring input and outputs and then the following days to test & 2 more days to train the operator/ engineer.

But you know i could complete the above only after 18 days.That 18 days include preparing documentation, wiring diagram also.

But my quote is lumpsum not on per day or per hour basis.
Here i have lost on the days and also i could not concentrate on other customer until i complete the above job.

I also took some contigency of about another week more. But still i could not always predict the no. of days to do the job. I donot know on which basis you all calculate the no. of days required to do a particular job.

Here if i give per hour and my competitor gives lumpsum customer will prefer lumpsum price as they could allocate budget or they could expect the amount. But with per day they are not sure of how many days it will go and they always fear that they might give more to us by per day basis.

Because no body here quotes on per hour or per day basis. Actually people quote on per day/ per hour only for jobs where the machine is already running and if the customer wants to add some extra logic to existing PLC. IN that case i do profit. but most of the new projects we quote mainly on lumpsum basis only.

I'm not sure you understand my meaning when I say "set an hourly rate". That isn't restricted to cases where you are charging by the hour.

For example, lets say that you have 50% billable or project work hours, and that you work 3,000 hours per year (a 40 hour work week = 2,080 hours per year) and you want to make $100,000 per year. That means you have to average $67 per hour - call it $70 per hour.

When you quote your project, using Chako's format, lets say you assumed 7 days at 10 hours per day. Your minimum quote would have been $4,900. You should generally add 50% or so for contingencies - your experience will dictate the actual amount. That brings the price up to $7,350 - call it $7,500.

In your detailed proposal you define an hourly rate for additional work required, with written approval of the customer, outside the scope covered in your proposal. Use the $70 per hour. Then, if the customer's equipment or services aren't as expected and agreed upon, discuss it with him and follow it up with a letter, including the estimated charges for the work, which will be billed on an hourly basis.

This isn't always pleasant, as many customers will whine and holler and cry about extra charges. That goes with the territory. Be scrupulously honest, fair, and give the customer the benefit of the doubt and some concessions. However, in the long run, if you can't handle going toe to toe with those few unreasonable and tightfisted clients, you won't keep your business or your sanity.

Hi Velly.

As promised, I have uploaded a COMPLETE electrical set.

You can download it here:

JIC Electrical Drawing Set Example in AutoCad 2000
http://forum.mrplc.com/index.php?act=Downloads&CODE=02&id=185

Or if you want to see what a VIA Wiring Diagram drawing set looks like you can download this: (not much difference)

JIC Electrical Drawing Set Example in VIA WD v17
http://forum.mrplc.com/index.php?act=Downloads&CODE=02&id=186

We all wish you well, I hope you can get some SLEEP now that you have some information to work with. Everything that was said here should be taking to heart. Mr. Jenkins said some important things that you should think about.

good luck.

Hi Chakorules,

I downloaded your quote, and found it quite useful.
We are currently going through our documentation, so we are looking at every document of this type we gan get our hands on for ideas.

Thanks again,

Doug

No problems! Your welcome. I didn't know that this would be so popular. I am glad I could help. I went ahead an uploaded it for archive here:

http://forum.mrplc.com/index.php?act=Downloads&CODE=02&id=187

I referenced this thread at plcs.net with the download so everyone would know what the heck I was talking about.

Re: Thanks

Velly said:

...4 Analog input , 12 Digital input and 28 Digital output...
... I roughly expected that i could spend 7 days ...i could complete the above only after 18 days...

Click to expand...

Can you tell us why this was so?

Reason why it took more time than expected:

1.The site is around 1400 miles from my office. I went there with all my tools with a mood that i will complete everything and then return back to my site in one shot.

Before i left from my company i requested customer to get all site clearance and make the panel available for me.

But when i went there they did not permit me to work or did not give site clerance. I had no way of starting the job and have to walk all departments like instrumentation, production people and getting the site clearance on my own. It took time and finally at the end of the day i did not get the clearance. ALmost the same thing happened the next day.

Finally i got the permission to work. Removal of existing components and installation of new PLC took exactly one day.
For wiring i predicted 3 days time(10 hours per day) but i could finish only after 6 days time.

Then i took the next two days for testing the logic.

Once i was satisfied with the operation i called on the Instrument engineers to energise the full panel / field instruments.

Then customers 4 way ball valve seat failed and without noticing that they put the blame on my system. Finally i had to find the exact problem that the problem was on his field instrument and not in my PLC logic.

Then i requested them to change the ball valve seat or replace new ball valve. They took their own time to replace / change the valve and then again i we have to run the test.

With all difficulties they agreed for the PLC logic and then i have to give my training for the engineers.

Our contract is for a maximum of two days training for troubleshooting and maintenance of the PLC.

First group of engineers attended the training on day1 and they all wrote the training time and material were not of standard and their training co-ordinator informed me to conduct the class again. Because our payment term is credit / net 30 days.

If the training co-ordinator does not sign for the training completion they would not sign my invoice and henc i had to repeat the training again.

Actually the engineers wanted to know everything about the PLC. But i told them that my scope of contract is only about maintenance and troubleshooting but any way i could not convince them or instructor as they always have upper hand over me. becuase they havenot payed us or signed our invoice.

Finally i left the site and returned back to my office. there i had to prepare the Autocad drawings. documentation etc and all took its time.