I have already ran into trouble with getting help from Andover. I understand the french have already laid off people. This is the beginning of the end for a great company. Why they are selling out is all about the money and as a end user I will be forced to switch to Allen Bradley after all these years and after I standerdized on Modicon. The service will get bad, because that is just the attitude of the French towards Americans anyway. They will take a perfectly good product and want you to use theirs. I am tired of sending our Jobs over seas.

 

Hello Jerry

I have only one thing to say to you... "Simatic".

Cheers
Donald P

 

I don't normally respond to such negative comments but I do want to set the record straigtht.

Modicon (Schneider Electric Services) technical support in the USA ( North Andover, Massachusetts) is alive and well.

We are still here and there have been no changes to our staffing or expertise levels. We still provide telephone technical support for our Modicon/Telemechanique/Symax Automation product line ranging from a 30 year old 184 or 584 controller to our new Modicon Quantum PLC with customized web pages.

I certainly don't want to make this an advertisement, I just want to provide the facts.

Best regards, Frank Prendergast Schneider Electric Services

 

Did I miss something here? Why are you convinced that Modicon is going away?

 

Jerry, you sound very bitter. You do realize that Modicon has been French owned for several YEARS, right?

RAH

 

I am not sure who you are dealing with, but I have no problems getting answers out of the technical support people that work for Modicon (Schneider Electric). I know I am biased as I work for a Modicon distributor providing technical support for Modicon products, but must say that your local support people (distributor and local Schneider field office) should really be handling the majority of your support, and then only turning to the factory as needed. Modicon makes a good product, and since schneider purchased them, the product has become better, the software (Concept) is a vast improvement over the older software, and in fact over most other PLC vendors software. I agree that I am not happy about the shift towards producing more of the product oversees as well as a few other things, but it has been a good change all for all. As for PLC's do you really think that AB makes most of their products themselves, they outsource the manufacturing of much of their products, as do most companies that want to be competetive in todays market.

 

Jerry,

I don't know what problems you ran into. I just called into Modicon and got great support. I didn't talk to anyone without even a little French accent !

I had questions on our older 984A series controller and got great help. The person I talked to had a ton of experience and I did not have to wait long to get the answer.

I don't really have a PLC vendor preference but I had no problems with getting help.

 

And help our friends from Germany......

 

Of course: A not firendly product without support. The perfect combination

 

I have not called recently about Modicon products, but over the years the tech support received through their 800# has been pretty good, generally superior to what you get from other PLC brands. In fact, I did just recently call regarding an ancient Square D controller and got very good advice and information. the tech support guy even stated there was one on a wall in the tech support center.

 

Jerry,

Unfortunately you are right. I see it in a different aspect though. What is happening here, since French took over, they pushing heavily Telemechanique brand under Modicon name which is wrong I think. These are two completely different products. Also few years ago they completely screwed up their distribution channels, at least in Southern California. As far the software is concerned I have been using Taylor software for quite some time and unfortunately after Schneider aquired Taylor,the software got worse. I compare for example ProworxNxT with Proworx32. The last one suppose to be superior but it is not.

As far the hardware... Take for example Compact line of PLCs - it is very good product but no improvements have been made in recent years. What I am talking about is at least one ethernet communication port on this processor. If they want to compete with AB SLC line, they have to make it up.

If things continue to go this way, Modicon which used to be considered a Cadillac among the PLCs will soon become a synonim of a Peugeot...

 

Modicon has a long history of distribution problems. For a while in this area it seemed like they had a different distributor every few years.

It is tough to sell the tele junk here in the us where people expect a much higher quality product, but there are people using fuji, mitsubishi, etc, strictly because of price. in my mind, it makes no difference for low end stuff what the brand name on the package is, and those who are driven primarily on price will gravitate to the low end stuff.

I agree proworxNtx is pretty decent, and the compact line is a solid line of controllers, but there is only so much you can do to it. it is very long in the tooth, and is probably near to the end of its useful life (as is the AB PLC5/SLC). Not that I mean that any of these products are going away anytime soon, or you should not use them, only that if you use them you will probably find you have an orphan 10 years from now, where as the quantum (modicon) and contrologix (AB) will still be going strong.

 

try OPTO22: easy and solid (www.opto22.com)
AB is defacto standard that I would take als immediate second choice.
Regards

 

We have put a contract out to a software house and stated that they must use ProWorx32.

They are experiencing a lot of difficulties with this product.

Do you know of a list of known problems with this product and also a fix list?

Regards

 

Modicon PLC's are the best PLC's that I never seen. I do not think that it is the beginning of the end. Have a look on the new development made by Schneider Electric: New Quantum CPU's, Unity pro....

Concerning the technical support, I want to say that I always get the right answer fron customer central.

Thank you Modicon and Schneider.

 

AGREE 100%. We did a 3000 I/O system with Modicon recently and it was a breeze. Not only are Modicon's the simplest to program and use, they are reliable.

Modicon is still the best, and I have worked with Siemens (who sells tech support by the hour!!!! all this for slow PLCs), Allen Bradley (excellent but pricey), GE (all right).

As for Tech Support, my local distributor is all right and North Andover answers are ok. They could make an effort to better the support of Monitor Pro.

Kudos to the software programmers of Concept. This is a nice piece of code.

 

As a staff in the distributers company(china),we offers some techniche support. But i have to say that the support from MODICON 800# is not responsible to their answers. They took liberties with your problems.

 

Is there a link to the various Modicon X84 series of PLC that have been pulled off the spares support list - i.e. they have reached the end of life?

 

We had difficulty communicating over modems with Proworx 32 software.
Things worked reliably under Proworx NXT version the tech suport folks advised that the newer software worked differently in this area than past versions and was able to duplicate our results of unreliable communications.

Trainers on new Proworx32 advised it is very much linked to Windows xp version and a patch by Microsoft can mess thing up.

OTHER USER AT THE 2004 TRAINING COURSE WERE ALSO NOT IMPRESSED WITH NEWER VERSION OF PROWORX 32

doug