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Machine Commissioning: A Programmer’s Checklist

Oct 31, 2012

A lot of emphasis is placed upon the importance of specification gathering and project planning before starting a machine project. Once projects are underway, control engineers are typically under pressure from project managers to complete programming on time even though they may be waiting for the mechanical and electrical teams to finish their parts of the projects. The control engineers working on programming the machine face a time crunch as the deadline nears. Due to commercial reasons, in many situations, final programming is done after the machine ships to the customer, leaving testing incomplete.

In the race to deliver the project on time, programmers may be tempted to skip the “wrap-up” steps after programming is complete. Below are eight essential wrap-up steps that make the project easy to maintain, easy to troubleshoot, and easy to build upon, if needed.