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Automation Support from PLCs to servers

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by mandrake64 2 views

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My organisation is considering a change in the way support of automation systems (across several distinct steel industry manufacturing units) can be achieved with ongoing personnel losses. Does anyone have any practical exposure to similar situations in otehr industries that I might find useful?
We have a high level of attrition amongst computer engineers both at a process control computer level and down at the sensor and actuator level. It is also very difficult to attract new engineers into these areas with their lack of immediate appeal and cost pressures from managerial level. It is highly likely that automation support will be consolidated across several plants and departments. A model of how this could be set up may be available in another industry. I suspect that a model taken directly out of the IT industry could be "put under a piece of wood while we bang a few nails through it" to make it fit.

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by penguinsrule

I'm assuming that you are in a union environment??
Are you having to deal with the IBEW on this issue? Are you deliberately not wanting to involve the IBEW? This is touchy ground.

by mandrake64

Not a compulsory Union environment. I am not particularly concerned with the Unions at this stage. This is not a question about reducing numbers. That is happening anyway because people are leaving of their own accord. The question is really one about the best options for providing automation support across the whole range of automation equipment. Some people will still operate within their niches generally but the opportunities may be there for extension of their role and responsibility to help the organisation, if not just for their own interest and development. If you don't offer people challenges, they will lose interest and start looking for challenges elsewhere. If you stop learning, you wither and die.

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