SCADA Control Room Management

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Michael Batchelor

OK, I tried to keep quiet on this, but I must have a genetic defect that keeps me from not saying it. So here comes the "Michael Batchelor Organizational Change Rant" again. (Kinda has a nice ring to it!)

The thread Ranjeet referenced is good, but it just says exactly the same things that I and who knows how may other people have been saying for decades now. This argument goes back way before 2004.

And I think Jeff is partly right that the issues involve a tremendous amount of personal conflict. But I'm not sure that it's all at the level of guys down in the trenches.

I truly believe that the only solution to this whole dilemma is for a fundamental business reorganization to occur that merges IT with the rest of the engineering in an organization. Period. I do not think anything short of that can solve the problem. And this will involve a huge loss of stature for the IT group.

There! I've said it again! And I'll point out again that this is all moot. This whole discussion is going on in a controls group forum, not an IT group forum. And there's not a CIO on the planet who would give you 5 minutes to discuss this. Does anyone on this thread have enough horsepower to even *GET* an audience with a Fortune 500 corporation CIO? If you do, I'll ask this again, do you have the guts to print this whole thread and throw it on the CIO's desk?

Someone chided me earlier that I should become a high paid business consultant if I thought this was what was necessary. I've been working on my resume. Anyone know of a customer looking for a business consultant with dirty fingernails and a loop calibrator in the trunk of his car?

Michael
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Michael R. Batchelor
www.ind-info.com

GUERRILLA MAINTENANCE [TM] PLC Training
5 Day Hands on PLC Boot Camp for Allen Bradley
PLC-5, SLC-500, and ControlLogix
www.ind-info.com/schedule.html
[email protected]

Industrial Informatics, Inc.
1013 Bankton Cir., Suite C
Hanahan, SC 29406

843-329-0342 x111 Voice
843-412-2692 Cell
843-329-0343 FAX
 
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Michael Griffin

In reply to Michael Batchelor: Perhaps you could get the Finance department put under Engineering while you are at it; then we wouldn't have any trouble getting our purchase orders approved any more. Surely it would be a good fit. After all, creative financial engineering seems to be a "core competency" for most large companies these days.
 
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Michael Batchelor

Great idea! I'll put that in my management plan!! Look for it!!! Coming soon to a factory near you!!!! ;)

--
Michael R. Batchelor
www.ind-info.com

GUERRILLA MAINTENANCE [TM] PLC Training
5 Day Hands on PLC Boot Camp for Allen Bradley
PLC-5, SLC-500, and ControlLogix
www.ind-info.com/schedule.html
[email protected]

Industrial Informatics, Inc.
1013 Bankton Cir., Suite C
Hanahan, SC 29406

843-329-0342 x111 Voice
843-412-2692 Cell
843-329-0343 FAX
 
I have worked for both large and small outfits, as small as 100 employees and as large as 70000. I am an instrument guy so I am hardly objective.

What I can tell you for sure is whether the plant hires I.T. guys to look after it or instrument guys, you want to make sure the work for the plant and not corporate. As soon as corporate I.T. get there fingers in the pie you will be waiting for 4 weeks for permission to update a driver. Way too cumbersome, keep your team lean and mean, use "I.T." as a resource, don't give them control.

The best I have seen is a Process Control group made up of Instrument, Electrical and I.T. types working for plant operations not maintenance. We handled plant control system and field instrumentation and control. It seems once you become part of the maintenance group you tend to loose touch with the plant and only see as far as your next work order. My experiance for what it is worth.
 
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Tony Brickner

If I saw this thread 4 years ago, I probably would have ran out of my last interview screaming.

I'm an IT Network guy working for an O&G company. I've been focused in networking since my days in the Air Force, but things like PLCs interest me, so when my interviewer told me about their network and what my roll would be, I started glazing over. Towards the end of the interview he mentioned how IT was meant to be a resource to our SCADA network and I snapped back to attention.

Our enterprise network is large but there is nothing ever groundbreaking going on. The SCADA network in my area of the world is insane when you factor in the number of PLC, HMI, and different network components that are out there. Then you take that network and spread it across half of the state, my mind has exploded more than once as I stick to my "resource" role.

To be clear, I like 8-5; sure there are days when I come back in late for some work that requires outages but they are "mostly" planned. I've been called late at night when our commissioning team has connected new devices to the SCADA network and no one is able to understand the problem. The problem for me is, I'm still the "kid in the candy store" that stares in amazement at how these PLCs process data from an arm load of sensors and decide that things are working the way they are supposed to.

Our problem is that the guys that are responsible for the SCADA network are process engineers, electricians, and automation technicians that have learned different pieces of the networking world as the oil field grew. The danger is that vendors come in and offer their input and the SCADA network guys decide that it would benefit them. Most of the time, this is true and it is something that they should have been doing from the start; since they don't understand IT network concepts, the idea isn't implemented properly or things are way over done.

I agree with the first quarter of this page (still reading the rest) that you need two groups and that IT should not be involved. I agree with that because I'm selfish and like my sleep. The problem is, I like my pay check and if that automation network is not running, I'm back on the job market.
 
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I agree with you Tony. I am a controls Engineer and I handle the SCADA system. I also keep in close contact with our I_T person. I_T assigns the addresses. I program the system and handle communication errors that are not network related. I keep all deviceS off of Plant network With the exception of Printers from PLC and sending DATA from PLC to SQL database. I am giving Admin rights to change settings on any PC's that I may need to use during day to day operations. Good relationship between us and all work gets accomplished quickly.
 
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