Too many timers

[Goody]

So last week, I couldnt make it to a customer in time - I was too far away and too busy. Tomorrow was not quick enough for them. So they got another PLC programmer in to program in a new proxy switch they wanted. He was working on one of my programs and commented to the customer that I use too many timers. By the way - this program is beautiful. It is stuctured, fully commented and statemented. every action has a timer running along side monitoring it and if it times out - an alarm is set and an appropriate action done - these are the timers he said were too many. He told them that 90% would never time out ????? They told me he was only an hour doing it because he didnt mess with adding needless timers. This program I wrote, besides the timers is so brilliant at error trapping that they think it comes with the package - they never actually think all the error traps were hand written. Now I have a rival who they think is more economical than me. This is not really a question - more of a does anyone else understand my frustration at this. They are happy that his invoice is only a quarter of what mine is for small alterations AAAARRRGHHHH

[Crossbow]

It's an uphill battle proving quality of work. I too have done the same things. I try to write too much error trapping into my systems. But evaluate how much of it is really neccessary. How many of the error conditions can actually happen? How critical are they? Tell them if they want simple cheap code you can do that too, but that they will in the long run be less satisfied.

[TimWilborne]

Stand your ground and continue taking the time to write quality, not quantity. The bean counters will always like the cheap keyboard button pusher (I can't bring myself to call them a programmer, much less a rival). But when maintenance has to dig into the program for troubleshooting, whose program will be more useful for them? Downtime is everything and when maintenance puts their 2 cents in you will come out on top.

[panic mode]

ROFL, i love that one... don't worry, there is always someone to complain.... if he was able to make changes to somone else's program, and still talk about it, he didn't need to look much around to feel comfortable and figure out how program works. i don't like timers - unless needed (i do them for every motion, diagnostics is good 70% of my programs). you can't do much without them when making watchdogs... grouping those in "alarm" file and everything else in "status" keeps everyone happy. no timers in the sequence or output logic...

[Sleepy Wombat]

So did he only charge them an hour ? Probably.... Unfortunatley in this case the customer was more likely upset with the fact that they could not get you on site when required...rather then the 1/4 costing... they threw that little gem in just to rub salt in your wounds. BTW the only reason he didn;t add needless timers would have been because he didn;t know / understand what they do... therefore he makes accusations to justify to the customer his own short commings... by the sound of it you would of had it done in 20 min (not an hour) anyways... I've always like the term "code monkey"

[TimWilborne]

Yes, but when someone ask me to throw a program together real quick because their in a rush I always tell then "No Problem, let me go get my Code Monkey out of the trunk to help me out" Don't want to insult my most valuable asset

[phenesc]

I would stick to your guns and always choose quality over sloppy (get'er done mentality). Structure and error handling comes at a price but when a machine is down and nobody knows a solution because the machine just displays nothing, the extra effort will pay off. I have been trying to push a structured agenda at our company but it has been multiple years of adding a contact here a timer there to make it work that changes and improvments are a chore and risky on a 24/7 plant. I guess it falls to the programmer to prove the importance (I currently use downtime data). When things work well there is no credit to go around, but when they fail, the blame is in abundance. By the way do you use the fault timers as cycle time monitors? I use timers for overtime faults but these timers are also usefull for setup (flow control) and preventive maintennce (shortening or lengthening time). I used them to show flow control failures, cylinder wear, etc.. My 2 cents.

[Crossbow]

To be perfectly honest, I've been on both sides of this too. I've been the lower cost guy once or twice (but this was an example of the other guy who wrote no less than 3 rungs for what would typically be a light switch). He had timers on all inputs (most of which has presets of zero) turning on internal bits, then had the internal bits turning on the outputs. I can understand why this might be useful, but 20 steps of code for one input and one output. And I prefer to spend some time on the front side of an application thinking of all the possible ways it could fail. Keep in mind there will always be one that happens that you didn't plan for. Like I had a problem where we watched an exhaust fan on a boiler for overcurrent in case the air pressure on the outlet was too high. But we didn't look at low current. And what happens 2 years later? The guy calls me up and says there's no airflow out and the steam is coming into the building. Turns out the key in the motor shaft sheared off and the motor was spinning and the PLC kneow it, but the fan wasn't doing anything. So no matter all the things you plan for, one will get by on the first go-around.

[Goody]

Ah well all's well in paradise again :) Mr Cheep-n-cheerful did not understand 'bit shift lefts' and as they wanted my patented ( :)) all singing never been seen before pallet straightener altering - he was stumped. I give him straight 6's for cheek though. He phoned me to ask how it worked (or at least they made him phone me) Talk about having all the aces in your hand - I nicely explained to the management that cheaper is not always better and I am not a rescue service when mr cheap cant do it.

[TimWilborne]

In the end, quality always comes out on top