What to expect during a PLC migration kickoff

04/17/2015
by Qualitrol Support Team

Once a proposal for PLC migration is accepted, it's time to jump into action.

During a kickoff meeting with stakeholders, a project manager will be assigned to your migration project. This engineer's role will be to oversee the entire process on our side in addition to interacting with your team. Ideally, one person will be designated as the main contact to answer technical questions and make key decisions on your behalf to ensure the project runs smoothly and meets all expectations. 

In the initial kickoff meeting, the following criteria will be established: 

  • Master schedule for the project
    • Hardware arrival date
    • Time needed to wire and install
    • Dates for troubleshooting
    • Final commissioning timeline
  • Preferred intermediate milestones
  • Collect any CAD-generated drawing files for existing system
  • Determine which data registers are being remotely polled

Following the kickoff meeting, our team will design the final electrical layout — including new panels or sub-panels — and make preliminary electrical drawings. All designs are provided in AutoCAD so they can be passed back to you in a useable format and changes can be readily made throughout the project. 

Once the panel is laid out, the new PLC Bill-of-Material (BOM) is developed and procured. All of the necessary hardware components are purchased and ordered, with any physical assembly that can be completed beforehand being done at our in-house, UL-rated panel shop. During that same period our team will begin to rewrite your PLC program to clean things up and ensure efficiency. All software is tested in a rated panel shop. 

Rest assured that all software is tested in a controlled environment at our lab before being brought onsite. Close contact between our engineers and your team will continue during that process. We will continually update you while the programs and panels are built to ensure your team agrees with the decision-making process. More basically, our team believes open communication is crucial during this time to ensure the tools arrive and are installed as expected.