I'm looking for ideas for workflow improvements.Hours upon hours of my time is spent taking IO lists and making it into an import file for one piece of software, but a few hours later I find myself converting that softwares exported data for another component of the SCADA architecture. Add in more than one person working on the same project at the same time and it becomes a nightmare! What have you done to optimize your workflow so you can spend less time organizing data in excel? Almost all our PLC programs are stored in a binary file. This is frustrating as we often have some people make changes or look at different ways to implement a function or feature. This is made easy by using a version control system (CVS, SVN, GIT, etc) for simple text files, but completey fails to address these binary files. Any ideas on supporting version control for PLC programs?
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Unfortunately we're victims of a closed industry. When using technology from a single vendor, they usually integrate quite well. For instance:
In those cases, you don't need to create intermediate tags to worry about mapping. However, if one person is doing the PLC programming and another is doing the HMI or SCADA, you really need to create some kind of communication document. I don't see a way around that. Regarding source control, again, some vendors have integrated source control packages (more money of course), like Rockwell's RSMACC (now called FactoryTalk AssetCenter) which is a repository for PLC programs. Newer technology, like RSLogix 5000 and the ControlLogix platform actually supports concurrent online programming. I've worked online concurrently with another programmer and we had few if any problems. You get a slight blip when the other person makes a change close to what you're looking at. In my opinion, PLC programming software is light years short of where it could be.
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