Pressure


I know, everyone probably thought this was going to be something on pneumatics or hydraulics, maybe something on pressure switches or proportional valves, but no… today I’m talking about job related pressure and stress.

It comes with the territory, industrial automation involves deadlines and technical things that can go wrong, so naturally people working in this field can get a little wound up. Especially when the customer is expecting things to be perfect and on schedule. Things rarely work that way in this field though, it seems that the bigger and more complex a project is, the more things go wrong. This can often lead to late hours, finger pointing and an overall feeling of pressure from every side. Much of this can be internally generated, when things aren’t going well around you the tendency is to put pressure on yourself to try and fix the problem even if it isn’t yours.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I believe that the key to success with automation projects is to have a good plan in the beginning and stick with it as the project proceeds. By the time systems have been built and are ready for debug errors have compounded themselves and are much harder to correct. Even though it takes a little more time in the beginning to establish guidelines and procedures, maybe do a little training, in the long run it will save as much time as it takes.

It may even help prevent stress and unmet expectations later.

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Electrical Engineer and business owner from the Nashville, Tennessee area. I also play music, Chess and Go.