shame on an IGA posted:

this is the nerve center of an unspeakably complex robot.

shame on an IGA posted:

swiss lathe

chitoryu12 posted:

The story of how a team was required to tell a company how their own petrochemical plant operated because they lost all the important files.

quote:

YERUSHALAYIM - A top Hamas terrorist was killed in an explosion in Gaza, Hamas announced Sunday. Mohammed Koka was the head of missile and bomb manufacturing for the terror group. He was severly wounded in an explosion in northern Gaza Saturday night, Hamas said. Hamas classified the explosion as a “work accident,” with the explosion ripping off several of his limbs, injuring him severely. He died shortly later in a Gaza hospital.

Qwijib0 posted:

Top Hamas Bomb Maker Killed in ‘Work Accident’


http://hamodia.com/2017/02/05/top-hamas-bomb-maker-killed-work-accident/

Mycroft Holmes posted:

OSHA is harram

Hyperlynx posted:

I feel that a lot of software development is similar, where there's code nobody's touched for ten years, it's not documented or is poorly documented, stuff that seemed like a good idea at the time now looks strange and unconventional, and you just have to reverse engineer it to figure out how it works.

Also, I used to work for companies that sell computerised ways of storing and organising plant data. I noted that there was a tendency sometimes for customers to think they could just throw computers at the problem and that would solve it. They hadn't implemented good data management and management-of-change policies in the first place, and that was the core problem. Our stuff would allow them to computerise processes like that, but not bring organisation to chaos just by itself.

Also: apparently engineers REALLY loving love Excel spreadsheets. Sooo much writing importers to load data from Excel spreadsheets...

Abyssal Squid posted:

https://twitter.com/spectatorindex/status/828234422923063298

shame on an IGA posted:

Older discussion, but I just want to point out that this isn't a network closet. The orange and green cables are for Siemens servo drives, one is power and the other control data. The purple ones are RS-485 Profibus data bus cables, and this is the nerve center of an unspeakably complex robot.

Each pair of Orange & Green cable represents one motion axis.

zedprime posted:

But a lot of it goes back to Keiya's point. The common thread of ASPEN, Minitab, SAP, and Excel is they expose databases and database manipulation in a way you don't need to learn C, javascript, or SQL and there isn't the critical mass of the magic combination of industry expert and programmer to create anything more bespoke than ASPEN sims, Minitab templates, SAP batches, or Excel sheets per process.

zedprime posted:

ASPEN goes so far as to let you import Excel spreadsheets for custom simulation programming (because the alternative is scripting in a C variant, javascript, etc. and that's a lot rarer of a talent in the industry).

Meanwhile I've seen enough several thousand dollars per seat programs who's entire function is to supply managers with control charts while the engineer who knows how to use Excel and Minitab is on vacation because the Six Sigma god demands sacrifices of charts.

If nothing Excel becomes a necessary step in a workflow because its useful for marshaling data from one function to another. The major functions something like a chemical plant engineering team is working on are simulation, trending/stats analyses, and financial. You've got various simulation programs that are incredibly useful like ASPEN or pipe sims, you've got Minitab (hopefully, or they've cheaped out and given you a more academic focused stats program) for stats, and SAP for financial, and Excel to tie them together or massage presentation modes together. You can pay big bucks per seat on modules that tie ASPEN and plant statistics together and everybody has a Six Sigma flavored stats program to sell but its hard to argue with Excel being relatively pennies for a seat.

But a lot of it goes back to Keiya's point. The common thread of ASPEN, Minitab, SAP, and Excel is they expose databases and database manipulation in a way you don't need to learn C, javascript, or SQL and there isn't the critical mass of the magic combination of industry expert and programmer to create anything more bespoke than ASPEN sims, Minitab templates, SAP batches, or Excel sheets per process.

Volcott posted:

I have a friend who works at some sort of firm that writes code for nuclear power plants. One of their customers is Japan's nuclear power company. They have to keep multiple PC-88 and 98s in storage for... some kind of certification, I think it was? I don't think they really have a plan if they all stop working at once.

spankmeister posted:

Wait. New plant builds still use PDP-11's?

Three-Phase posted:

Maybe eventually the Raspberry Pi can get nuke certified?

I was at a rewind shop that did nuclear work (coolant pump motors, etc) and literally everything that involved nuclear work had to be tracked separately. I mean like tracking the tools used, materials used, even seemingly stuff like the brand and lot of bolts and washers. Everything was physically locked away in a separate storage area.

BattleMaster posted:

Selecting new hardware and writing new software and then getting it approved by the regulator would probably also be more expensive...

tight aspirations posted:

BattleMaster posted:

Selecting new hardware and writing new software and then getting it approved by the regulator would probably also be more expensive than having new PDP-11s made. And we already know that they work and they do everything that's needed and are qualified for the job.

C.M. Kruger posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl07BrckR10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGo1PRvFlWA

Random Encounter posted:

Remember to drain your smoke detectors every few years, or the smoke build up could leak out.

Say Nothing posted:

http://i.imgur.com/Ho4ROMr.mp4

Say Nothing posted:

http://i.imgur.com/Ho4ROMr.mp4

EVIL Gibson posted:

Are you saying there is direct manipulation of third party database data over excel going on because ..... How is your rollback done in case someone selects all and hits a big ol' delete? Also lockouts a problem?

Hyperlynx posted:

I've heard of ASPEN before, but don't know anything about it, so I can't really comment on it, though I believe we considered them competitors. Our stuff was focused on plant maintenance exclusively. To that end, it aimed to help build up an accurate picture of exactly what functional locations are in the plant, what the manufacturer and model is for that part, and if necessary what specific asset/serial number is installed in a location (for pressure sensitive valves mostly, as far as I know).

Then you have bills of material, maintenance manuals and manufacturer's manuals, for a given model by a given manufacturer.

Then you can define preventative maintenance plans for all your FooCorp brand #353 Cardinal Grammeters based on the manufacturer's recommendation.

So, you can plan ahead for what maintenance when you send the technician out to do the maintenance, you can find ahead of time exactly what procedure docs and spare parts, and equip them accordingly. That's particularly important for things like oil rigs, where it's expensive to get the tech to and from site, so if they've got the wrong parts it's a huge waste of time and money.

To get back to spreadsheets, that end of things is (for us) getting data into the system in the first place. Part of that is simple checking for mistakes or missing data (did you fill out the criticality field? Is the functional location tag actually a valid, existing tag?). Those rules are probably supposed to get defined at the start of a project for a new plant module or whatever, but it seems that they need to change over time instead. What if you thought at the start that all your pipes need to be colour coded red, green or brown, your spreadsheet has a dropdown box to enforce that, but then later on in the project you find out you actually need blue and yellow pipes as well? Or that you don't need brown ones after all? You've got to update the spreadsheet and make sure everyone has the new version, and is working with the new version, rather than simply changing the value in the one system everyone logs into, so that it's definitely correct and up to date for everyone.

Part of it is also helping automate management of change, where you want to review the data with human eyes before you put it in the system, so the software had workflow capability built in. So instead of emailing around versions of Excel files and manually teaching who's approved what version of what, you get the system to pass on to the appropriate person the objects they need to approve. They can see all the data connected with those objects, including existing data in the system that's relevant to them, rather then only the data in the spreadsheet and what related info they can dig up manually.

Finally, there's some degree of trying to keep track of what's actually, currently in the plant "as built" verses what's been designed to be changed, so that you don't try to do maintenance on bits that aren't there yet. Admittedly we didn't really support that part without some fiddling and custom work, though we should have.

Anyway, if nothing else, centralising all the info in one database avoids overhead and mistakes from emailing copies of data around.

mllaneza posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLcFWGIYthA

A reddit user posted posted:

SAP is designed to employ consultants, not to help you. But as IT, you aren't who they're selling to, they'll sell your execs and then shove it down your throat.

Mycroft Holmes posted:

you want something dead simple and reliable for important applications like nuclear power plants.

BattleMaster posted:

Aint' broke/don't fix and all that.

spankmeister posted:

Well yeah but at some point installing 40 year old computers becomes a problem because of parts availability and being dependent on one, maybe two companies in the world that can service your critical machinery. What if the company goes broke and there is a fire that destroys their warehouse or w/e? Or the last greybeard who really knows how the memory management works dies.

Say Nothing posted:

http://i.imgur.com/Ho4ROMr.mp4

spankmeister posted:

Well yeah but at some point installing 40 year old computers becomes a problem because of parts availability and being dependent on one, maybe two companies in the world that can service your critical machinery. What if the company goes broke and there is a fire that destroys their warehouse or w/e? Or the last greybeard who really knows how the memory management works dies.

In 2050 at the end of the life of the CANDU reactors the pdp-11 will be 80 years old.

Granted, so will the rest of the parts of some of these plants but still.

Boiled Water posted:

NASA have this problem as they keep sending their computers far away. If I remember correctly they are in dire need of fortran programmers.

spankmeister posted:

Well yeah but at some point installing 40 year old computers becomes a problem because of parts availability and being dependent on one, maybe two companies in the world that can service your critical machinery. What if the company goes broke and there is a fire that destroys their warehouse or w/e? Or the last greybeard who really knows how the memory management works dies.

In 2050 at the end of the life of the CANDU reactors the pdp-11 will be 80 years old.

Granted, so will the rest of the parts of some of these plants but still.