PLC and SCADA programming
The program has to work at commissioning — and be readable by a technician five years later. We program PLC, HMI and SCADA in Siemens and Schneider, test against the physical panel and commission on site.
The code has to be readable by whoever is standing at the cabinet at three in the morning
When a production line stops, it is rarely the programmer who is on site. It is a technician with an HMI in front of them, and they need to work out why the sequence is not moving on. How long the downtime lasts is decided by how the program is structured and named — not by how elegantly the logic is written.
We build the program from function blocks that correspond to the physical parts of the plant, so a block can be read without reading the rest of the code first. Tag and signal names follow the panel's terminal lists and labelling from the first version, so nothing has to be translated between diagram and program. Alarms come with an instruction for action, not just an error code.
We program in Siemens TIA Portal as our main platform, and in Schneider where that is the platform the plant runs on. The operator screens in HMI and SCADA are built around the physical layout of the plant, so the operator recognises their plant on the screen instead of reading a list of tags. Whether SCADA should be local or client/server is decided by how many people need to see the same thing, and where they are.
We can program into a panel someone else has built — and we can deliver program, panel and commissioning under one point of responsibility. Tell us where the line should be drawn.
Jacob Kristensen
Commercial Project Manager · Do you have a project brief you would like us to look at? Call or write — we'll get back to you — normally within 1 working day.
Email: jk@tech-automation.dk
Mobile +45 2540 0678
Four kinds of job we are asked to do
Most enquiries fall into one of them. They differ in how much we need to read before we can write.
A new program for a new plant
We start with the I/O list and the control philosophy, simulate the logic before anything moves, and test against the physical panel at the factory acceptance test (FAT). You are welcome to take part in the test.
Rebuilding a control system in operation
We go through the program, I/O lists and documentation, define what can be reused, and plan the changeover around your production — so the stoppage is as short as possible.
Machine control for a machine builder
The same program on machine number one and machine number twenty. The basis is approved once, and every machine is tested to the same test plan, so the delivery is identical every time.
A program nobody knows any more
The supplier is gone and the code is undocumented. We read through it, describe what it does, and tell you honestly whether it should be corrected or rewritten.
Do you have a control system that needs writing — or reading?
Send us the I/O list, the wiring diagrams or simply a description of the plant. We will come back to you with how we would approach the programming. Normally within 1 working day.
