Automation Chemical Engineering

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Thread Starter

Claudio Pires

Hi, all !
This time it isn't a "desperately seeking solution" e-mail ! ...but
in some ways it still remains "desesperado" !
Today I read a technical paper about automation in chemical
industry, in a chemical engineering magazine, written by a electricist
engineer... It made me wonder why not written by any chemical engineer
with automation skills ?!?! Do I fit in ?! What kind of role are we
playing in the automation field ?! Are there many chemical engineers
developing industrial software applications ?! What advantages can we
bring, as chemical professionals, to this matter ?!
...yes, I need support !!!
Thanks!!!
 
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Paul Gruhn, P.E. Moore Process Automatio

IMHO, no one has the entire skill set to design a control system all by
their lonesome. It's a team effort; process (chemical), electrical,
instrumentation, etc.

Paul Gruhn, P.E.
Houston, TX
 
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Steve Monnet

I support you 100%...

I'm a chemical enginer and I play in the automation field. I'm starting up a new company active in the advanced control (fuzzy logic, neural network and expert system).

I think every engineer can tune a PID loop and write control program but I think that a chemical engineer can add value on advanced control through
the expertise of the process itself.

I support you...

Steve
 
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Johnson Lukose

I had a discussion on the brain drain in the automation and manufacturing industry these days in Malaysia. We keep losing the best and brightest electrical / electronis engineers to Internet and E-business companies. These graduates are not interested becoming P.E.s anymore. Being an engineer holds no magic for them. Anyone and everyone who has a half baked
knowledge of software is being sucked into this giant internet / e-business / web telecom... whatever land. The only ones left were chemical engineers!

thanks.
 
P
Interesting comment. In my last company, we lost two young guys from the EE/Controls group to "web" software development (whatever that may be). One was a degreed engineer... the other had been writing ladder logic for a few years after starting as one of our field service reps. Both were in their late 20's and both are now out of engineering as far as I know. Is this a phenomina in other engineering groups as well?

Paul T




From: "Johnson Lukose" <[email protected]>
To: "The Automation mailing list, managed by Control Technology Corporation"
<[email protected]>
Subject: Re: ENGR: Automation Chemical Engineering

I had a discussion on the brain drain in the automation and manufacturing
industry these days in Malaysia. We keep losing the best and brightest
electrical / electronis engineers to Internet and E-business companies.
These graduates are not interested becoming P.E.s anymore. Being an
engineer holds no magic for them. Anyone and everyone who has a half baked
knowledge of software is being sucked into this giant internet / e-business
/ web telecom... whatever land. The only ones left were chemical engineers!

thanks.

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Boudreaux, M (Mike)

Johnson,

I'm a chemical engineer and I've considered leaving engineering for the internet/e-business/IT companies. The money's not that much greater, but the benefits and work environments can be many times better than that for engineers. The manufacturing industry will have to learn to treat their people better if they want to keep technical personnel. One problem that I find with the chemical industry in particular is that it is in many ways an old industry with old ideas about how to deal with people.

The company I work for is great - they've treated me exceptionally well and I've been really happy doing what I do - but I keep hearing about IT people who start out with 5 weeks of vacation and work with the latest and greatest technologies every day. I have a friend who works for a telecom company in Austin, TX who gave their employees T1 connections at home. It is
definitely tempting.

Mike Boudreaux
http://mike.boudreaux.net
 
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Ramer-1, Carl

Ditto here. We lost a superb propellants and pressure vessel engineer to an IT management job in another city. He also got a 22% raise and other benefits. In all fairness though, besides being great at his degreed profession, he knows more about computers/computing than most of the IT
folks.

Carl Ramer
SGS
Kennedy Space Center, Florida
 
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Paul Gruhn, P.E. Moore Process Automatio

Web development (and related things) can be more interesting, creative, challenging, offer more variety, better pay, is in demand... and you don't
have to get your hands dirty.

On the other hand, lots of users are scaling back, dump more tasks on fewer people, give unreasonable deadlines, won't train their people, require long hours in sometimes nasty environments... Hhmmmm...
 
P
Is the difference here between engineering and programming? I have known brilliant programmers for things like database systems who had no formal background in software at all (the guy I
worked with back in the '80s who had a BA in music comes to mind). OTOH, I have known more than a few people over the years who wrote really
awful control programs because they did not seem to grasp the way that sensors, actuators and physics needed to be combined in interesting, creative and challenging ways <sorry, Paul,
couldn't resist! <g>> to make an inanimate object or process do something useful. Not to mention, of course, the times where your first cut as the controls engineer... not controls programmer... tells you that the machine or process cannot be
made to do what is being asked in the configuration given, or perhaps that the process or sequence can be simpler or more efficient than what you are originally given.

Paul T
 
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Simon Martin

Things go the other way. I have a fairly broad based degree engineering skill, but specialising in IT and computer science. I now work in controls (amongs other things) and think I am better for it.

Debian GNU User
Simon Martin
roject Manager
Isys
mailto: [email protected]
 
P
The thing that interests me about all this is the "career change" aspect. Most controls engineers know a good deal about PCs; some, like the group discussing an open controller standard on this group, know *a lot*. The thing is, tho, I have
always considered the computer a tool to do my job... being an engineer... not the job itself.
Maybe I could do straight software development or IT support; I just can't imagine wanting to.
<g>

Paul T
 
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Biggs, Daniel (IndSys, GEFanuc, NA)

Speaking of Automatiion and Chemical Engineering, I am a degreed ChemE that has started life in automation 4 years ago. I have not used my degree but wondered if I am still hireable in the chemical industry. Have I waited too long? Do chemical companies hire ChemE's with mostly automation experience alone?

DB
 
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Boudreaux, M (Mike)

Paul Tolsma [mailto:[email protected]] wrote:

<clip>
I have always considered the computer a tool to do my job... being an engineer... not the job itself. Maybe I could do straight software
development or IT support; I just can't imagine wanting to.
<clip>

I'm glad that you pointed this out. It has been really frustrating for me to hear my engineering peers say that they don't know how to use their
computers (beyond email, Word, Excel, and regretfully SAP), and they consider my computer skills to be something beyond regular engineering
skills. I have never understood this because computers were first developed for solving engineering and scientific problems.

When I talk about my career, people have often asked why I haven't considered pursuing a job in the IT field. My standard response is that I
have always considered computers a tool to do my work more efficiently and that the only reason I know alot about computers is because I'm interested in how to make them work better for me.

The career issue for me is whether I can get more personal benefit from my engineering skills (and degreed education) or my computer skills (with no
formal education or certifications). My answer has always been that engineering comes first, and my computer skills will only make me do my job
better. Anything beyond normal engineering computer skills I treat as a personal interest or a hobby.

Regards,

Mike Boudreaux
http://mike.boudreaux.net
 
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Saugata Ghosh

I agree with you.... Although the implementing a full-fledged automation project will need inputs from other disciplines too (ex. Electrical, instrumentation), but chemical engineers can play a major role. Unfortunately, we don't find many of them in this role. Even I was working as process design/control engineer in the Refining industry, but I switched over to Information Technology. In IT the majority, of jobs consist of using web technologies to develop web-based applications, which requires knowledge of handful of web technologies like java, xml etc. It's a real brain drain situation... But the latest twist in the IT job situation, thanks to the dot-com burst, may well set the stage for a big homecoming by all those who went astray, including myself. Saugata Ghosh
 
> I support you 100%...

I'm a chemical enginer and I play in the automation field. I'm starting up a new company active in the advanced control (fuzzy logic, neural network and expert system).

I think every engineer can tune a PID loop and write control program but I think that a chemical engineer can add value on advanced control through
the expertise of the process itself.

I support you...

Steve
 
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