Our facility has both electrical and instrumentation trades that are responsible for the maintenance and troubleshooting of our plant control system. Historically, PLC's and Motor control were electricians area and DCS and analog was instrumentation. Today its all PLC and we have to share processors and troubleshooting responsibility. How do you draw the line in the sand? HMI and networks for one trade not both? Analog only if the electrician can do it? Tell me what other industry does. Please.

 

Who cares/ As long as whoever is assigned the task is up to snuff I don't think it matters any. Often in the US this is determined by union contract. many plants have essentially merged instrument tech responsibilities into the electrician job.

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Bob
http://ilbob.blogspot.com/

 

welcome to the modern age

at some point the plant manager will be tasked to do that....

 

You might find it confusing; I find it very irritating to have other disciplines fiddling around in my instrumentation area. Some time ago i was on a plant where they have send the fitters with the electricians and instrument techs on a PLC course and the next thing you have 20 people in the control room and RTU's trying to resolve a software related instrumentation issue. All want to access the PLC since they all went on the same training and everyone has its own idea based on the background he is coming from and I eventually just went and sat down an looked at this lot. What a mess and the repair of the system took twice as long as normal because of this.

Other instances where you have electricians that have had some exposure to instrumentation and believe they know what they need to know and start fiddling around with instrumentation equipment. This is like someone that has learned how to check the oil level of a car and now believes he knows everything a mechanic does about cars. What then normally happens in a case like this is that once the electrician has screwed up the control system or instrument completely he would call the instrument tech to help. Strange that we don't have this need to fiddle around with pumps and high voltage equipment but the other disciplines cannot for the live of them stay out of the instrumentation field.

In short the instrumentation area involves or should involve everything to do with measurement and control of industrial process and machines. The electrician's job is powers supply and distribution, not control and certainly not measurement. PLC, SCADA, DCS soft and hardware is instrumentation software while relay logics and relay control panels have always been a electrician's responsibility but again here are overlaps as well from time to time since the instrument tech are normally more familiar with reading relay logic drawing due to his experience with PLC ladder logics and the two disciplines overlap most of the time when it comes to relay control panel repairs and fault finding.

There will always be areas where the work overlaps like when you have to work and calibrate a electric valve that works with 440VAC. Some electricians believe this is now their equipment and responsibility but it's not. It is still a final control element that has to be calibrated and setup by a measurement and control specialist. The electrician is only responsible for the main supply to the electric valve and to do the isolation when needed.

In general my feeling based on years of experience in the industry is that everyone should stick to their own area of expertize since that is the only way you will ever become a expert in your area. If you move over to another area and start playing around with things you don't fully understand, you will cause more damage most of the time than what you learn.

 

It's really strange but with particular situations I've been in, nobody else wants my job. I have 25 conveyor control boxes to make in a month or so with the conveyors unseen and lots of little features and a couple line machines to interface with. At past places, I got the job after the vendors guys gave up. And contrary to what the "anybody can do it" sales people say, the problem is very seldom the PLC anyways. As for new projects, if you can do it on a budget and a deadline, go for it. Not many unqualified people are that rash.

Regards
cww