Jobs in the automation field
In my previous life as a project engineer at Wright Industries (a Doerfer company), I worked on some projects that I couldn’t talk much about, being either government-related or potentially breaching confidentiality agreements. The project discussed in this post was …
Probably the most useful tool I have in my arsenal when doing preliminary design is Microsoft Excel. In many of the projects I have worked on over the last couple of years since I left Wright, the company I was …
Today’s topic concerns an area that affects engineers, technicians and sometimes even office personnel and yes, management. A major part of building anything involves accurately designing and describing the thing that is to be built. If all of the required …
Have you ever been to Genba? Let me take you to a mystical, wonderful land that far too many people overlook in their travels. Genba is a Japanese word that means “the actual (or the real) place”. To understand a …
For the past 20 years I have been involved in the automation and machine-building industry in one form or another. In 1996 when I had a lot more energy and less common sense, I started my own integration business that …
So… what do you do? Whenever I travel and meet new people this is a question I regularly get asked. It used to be a fairly simple question to answer… “I sell automation equipment”, or “I run a small machine …
Last week I had the privilege of sitting in a doctor’s exam room for about 45 minutes with nothing to do. Next to me was an exam table (not the one shown above…) that brought back some old memories. Back …
As safety systems become more and more complex (primarily because of the influence of European safety standards), the cost-effectiveness of safety PLCs has improved. I first noticed Safety PLCs being used only about five or six years ago, though according …
There has never been a better time to be an engineer when it comes to the tools available to help us in our jobs. Computers operate at amazing speeds, new software comes out every year with more and more capability …
Not long after starting the original Automation Consulting in 1996 I met a machine builder in Knoxville who taught me a great deal about machine building. When we started working together there were only a few of us and sometimes …
