A slight change in the process causes trouble for the automatic control designers; let’s discuss how to resolve it as quickly as possible

This problem! In our work in automatic control design, this is inevitable. As mentioned above, even a slight change in the manufacturing process requires significant adjustments to the automatic control systems. However, I believe that both electrical engineering and automatic control fields serve the manufacturing process. In an era that encourages continuous improvement and technological innovation, there are many more technical improvements needed in the manufacturing process. Since the requirements of the process change, we naturally need to adapt as well. It would be even better if we have effective solutions that can optimize the process further. As designers, the simplest approach is to wait for a notification of process changes, then issue notices for any additions or modifications before proceeding with the design work

Communicate more with the people in charge of the process to obtain new information as quickly as possible. Learn more about the process, be able to express your own opinions, avoid taking unnecessary detours, think things through carefully, and consider alternative solutions.

I really admire you. We are the end-users of the designs, and we have a lot of contact with design firms; many of their design documents are of poor quality – various processes, equipment, electrical systems, and instruments do not work together properly. Yet you still have to modify the instrument designs in response to changes in the processes. That is truly remarkable. I think this is also a characteristic of the way Chinese people work – it’s not very good, and the designed procedures are not clear enough. Making changes to a design is a serious matter; the design plan should be determined before actual design work begins, and it must be thorough and detailed. Even if modifications are necessary, they must be discussed jointly by the technical professionals from the design institute and the end-users in order to achieve better results. Unilateral changes can introduce many problems into the design. It is also important to improve designers’ comprehensive knowledge; they need to have a good understanding of various fields, and when designing something they should adopt an overall perspective rather than focusing only on their own specialty.

You all have great points. Although I’m just starting out, what you’ve said has really resonated with me

Well, this is a rather tricky issue. Even if you understand the production process as mentioned above, there are often still too many things to handle. The main approach is to communicate more with the process engineering team in order to make the changes as quickly as possible. Also, there aren’t many changes to the instrument tag numbers, right?

This problem exists in basically all other departments within the design institute. When the process changes, the impact on equipment and automatic control systems becomes most evident. Usually, everyone focuses closely on the process, and it’s better to communicate more. However, I personally think it would be useful if there were some software that could record one’s work; when making modifications, such software could provide intelligent suggestions – it could indicate the parts that will be affected, allowing us to make the necessary changes and then confirm them, haha……………………

I am also a user of the design, and I am currently dealing with the design firm! It seems that a lot of the work done by the designers at the design institute is actually done by us, the clients. Moreover, there is poor communication between the various departments in the design institute, which directly affects the quality of the designs.

Does the control scheme need to be modified? Then the parameters of the controller also have to be changed accordingly

The key factor is the impact on selection; as for controller parameters, it’s not a major issue.

I wonder if, in your respective workplaces, your income is proportional to the effort you put in! ? Our position in terms of self-control has already been shaken!

Design documents should leave room for flexibility. 1. Index table, organized by category; after the temperature circuits have been processed, go to the next page to handle circuits such as flow rate. There are small adjustments to the circuits, which can be made in the blank spaces. 2. Address segmentation: Assuming 5 pressure transmitters and 10 pressure gauges, the addresses will be as follows – pressure transmitters use the range 10x–10x, while pressure gauges use the range 11x; 3. Instrument specifications: Expensive instruments whose quantities may change due to investment adjustments are listed on the last pages ； And insert 1-2 blank pages as placeholders at the beginning as appropriate ； 4. For all CAD design files, create some templates; these templates should be designed according to one’s own preferences, with special handling applied as needed ； For example: LIC-101 is the level indication unit, XX is the adjustment device; LT-101 is the ultrasonic level transmitter; LI-101 is the PLC indication unit; LC-101 is the PLC adjustment unit. All of these “101” elements are separate character segments, and when moving on to the next circuit (102), etc., it’s possible to change everything with just one click of the mouse ； **Improve efficiency. 5. Before the design review is approved, the intermediate calculation data must be kept properly ； For example, the amount of material required for installing a single instrument remains constant (unless the overall layout changes); when the number of units changes, a simple multiplication will suffice. I’m not sure how many people on this forum are involved in design work. If anyone starts a thread for exchange of ideas regarding automation design techniques, I’ll pin it to give it support. :)

Everyone has spoken very well. On one hand, it’s necessary to communicate more with the manufacturing team; on the other hand, one should also act as suggested by those upstairs, by leaving some room for flexibility. I’m very happy with everyone’s discussions. Learned* it

For a control engineer to achieve more ideal system control, they must have a detailed and thorough understanding of the process.

This problem is really annoying. What the person on floor 12 said makes a lot of sense; I don’t know what to do either, so I’ll try the method suggested by floor 12

The ideal solution would be to use INTOOLS and PID from American Eagle Graphics. If these two tools are combined, then whenever there is a change in the process, the instrument data will adjust accordingly, which would simplify the tasks for us instrument technicians

Changes to the automatic control system resulting from modifications to the process are inevitable. This isn’t the most troublesome issue in the engineering design process. The most troublesome issue, I think, is the requirements related to the manufacturing process; it requires constant revisions. It’s not that someone else makes those changes, but you have to do them instead. There are always deficiencies in the automatic control parameters, which really gives you a headache.

:'( :'( :'( :'( :'( I’m the one who has suffered the most. Our company is involved in the development of new manufacturing processes, and the conditions under which these processes are carried out keep changing. I had to redo the specification documents 7 times in just one year, and that’s all by myself. One project with two units, three projects with six units – and yet I was lazy twice in October and failed to make the changes in time. My experience is that it’s impossible to solve this problem solely within the scope of work related to our field of self-control; all we can do is to communicate as much as possible with the process engineers and provide our professional opinions in a timely manner, so as to avoid changes resulting from issues identified from our perspective. But if changes are needed from the perspective of the process itself, there’s nothing that can be done. To avoid excessive changes to the process, it is only possible if the overall project manager does their job well. Design should be improved and carried out rigorously in accordance with standards; the outcomes of each stage of the design process must be carefully reviewed. Delays in the schedule should not be used as an excuse to skip these reviews or omit certain design stages in order to speed things up. As the saying goes, sharpening the axe doesn’t delay chopping wood; if the original design of a process isn’t subject to thorough and careful review and discussion, failing to make changes later on will only lead to accidents. For example, with the tight schedule of our project this year, we had to place orders for the equipment before the selection of instruments was completed; as a result, problems arose because the instrument connections could not be coordinated uniformly. In fact, from March until November, the process was still being modified. In the meantime, they kept urging all the departments to hurry up. Being lazy can save time, but since the manager will get angry, one has no choice but to work overtime, delivering results quickly after each revision. Crazy, there’s no way out. We can only plead with those in the engineering field to be thorough and careful. I earnestly implore the project manager and company leadership to be more serious and responsible in their work.

As a supplement, regarding the comments on the 12th floor, they mainly pertain to the first three items. 1. When it comes to adding or removing instrument tags, according to design specifications, there should be available slots for such tags. As for adding tag numbers, if your company’s policy is to assign sequential numbers from start to finish, that will be a problem. However, in many companies such as SEI, the serial numbers are only indicated on the PID drawing of the current page; they start over on the next page, with page numbers added at the beginning to serve as a reference. For example, on the first page there are PIC-0101, 0102, etc.; on the second page there are PIC-0201, 0202. In this way, it becomes much easier to add tag numbers. 2. The instrument index table: actually, there is no problem if software is used—it is generated automatically, so simply regenerate it. If it’s done manually, it’s quite troublesome; having to modify the entire specification sheet line by line just to delete or add a row is extremely frustrating. But aside from the method suggested on floor 12, there’s another approach that I think is better: use an Excel spreadsheet. Create a header row and lock those rows as title rows, after which you can fill in the content below them line by line. The spreadsheet will automatically paginate, and the headers along with page numbers will be included. This way, when modifying the content in the middle, there’s no need to worry about whether it affects an entire page – deleting or adding content becomes much simpler. 3. As for the specification sheets, I think whether it’s the practice in China or the approach of providing one sheet for each tag number abroad, there’s nothing special to say regarding modifications – neither deletion nor addition can simplify things. If it’s a matter of page numbers, continuous pages go without saying, but even for discrete pages, leaving blank pages as mentioned on floor 12 doesn’t solve the problem either. I don’t understand. Rather, for the sake of consistency in the files, other files also need to be modified; it’s quite troublesome if software isn’t used. But as for how to simplify things, it depends on what kind of file it is; for example, the instrument index table mentioned above will work, while other cases depend on the specific situation. This post was last edited by BUMMA on 2008-1-10 20:57]