You just hired on as electrical maintenance manager. Clara is the newest production superintendent; she oversees Production Area 3 (newest lines). Her lines are the real money makers. Production Area 2 produces older products that suffer from margin squeeze. Most of the products made in Production Area 1 are near the end of their life cycle.
About six months ago, Area 3 started experiencing excess downtime. The most common error code is now “PLC issue”. Clara worked at two other plants, and the PLCs didn’t have problems. Areas 1 and 2 don’t have PLC problems. Clara suspects her counterparts are trying to make her miss her numbers.
What would you recommend?
Clara’s suspicions could be right, but they could be greatly misplaced. You don’t want to take sides. Determine what PLC-related security measures make sense and implement them. This resolves any potential PLC tampering questions that might be taking place.
Interview each tech who did a “PLC problem” repair recently to find out why that error code was chosen. “PLC problem” could mean an issue with the final control element in a PLC loop and not the PLC itself. Ask the repair tech to recall the specific problem.
Modify repair report forms; replace that error code with something less generic and ensure “other” is available so an inapplicable code isn’t selected just to complete the form.