• krellor@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I used to do some freelance work years ago and I had a number of customers who operated assembly lines. I specialized in emergency database restoration, and the assembly line folks were my favorite customers. They know how much it costs them for every hour of downtime, and never balked at my rates and minimums.

    The majority of the time the outages were due to failure to follow basic maintenance, and log files eating up storage space was a common culprit.

    So yes, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the problem was something called out by the local IT, but were overruled for one reason or another.

    • Oliver Lowe@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      and log files eating up storage space was a common culprit.

      Another classic symptom of poorly maintained software. Constant announcements of trivial nonsense, like [INFO]: Sum(1, 1) - got result 2! filling up disks.

      I don’t know if the systems you’re talking about are like this, but it wouldn’t surprise me!

      • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah a few levels.

        Level 1: complex stand alone devices, mostly firmware.

        Level 1a. Stuff slightly more complicated than a list of settings, usually for something like a VFD or a stepper motor controllers. Not as common.

        Level 2 PLCs, HMIs, and the black magic robotic stuff. Stand alone equipment. Like imagine a machine that can take something, heat it up, and give it to the next machine.

        Level 3: DCS and SCADA. Data control center and whatever SCADA stands for, I always forget. This is typically for integrating or at least data collection of multiple stand alone equipment for level 2.

        Level 4: the integration layer between Level 3 and whatever means the company has for entering in sales.

        Like everything in software this is all general. Some places will mix layers, subtract layers, add them. I would complain about the inconsistent nature of it all but without it I would be unemployed.

        • Pat12@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Level 1a. Stuff slightly more complicated than a list of settings, usually for something like a VFD or a stepper motor controllers. Not as common.

          Level 2 PLCs, HMIs, and the black magic robotic stuff. Stand alone equipment. Like imagine a machine that can take something, heat it up, and give it to the next machine.

          Level 3: DCS and SCADA. Data control center and whatever SCADA stands for, I always forget. This is typically for integrating or at least data collection of multiple stand alone equipment for level 2.

          Level 4: the integration layer between Level 3 and whatever means the company has for entering in sales.

          Like everything in software this is all general. Some places will mix layers, subtract layers, add them. I would complain about the inconsistent nature of it all but without it I would be unemployed

          Is this specific software engineering languages? or is this electrical engineering or what kind of work is this?

          • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I am having problems understanding your questions. I generally operate on level 2 and we typically use graphics based languages when we implement scripting languages to do graphical languages. The two most common graphic languages are FBDs and Ladder-Logic. Both have a general form and vendor specific quirks.

            For scripting I tend towards Perl or Python, but I have seen other guys use different methods.

            Level 3 use pretty much the same tools. Level 4 I have in the passed used a modbus/tcp method but this isn’t something I can really say is typical. One guy I know used the python API to do it.

            • Pat12@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              oh, thank you

              my background is not in engineering which explains my confusing questions