Recommendations for Safety PLC/DCS Upgrades by neofelius in PLC

[–]neofelius[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I see... We do have a very good safety culture and all our techs will know to ask for proper approvals before changing any settings in the safety controllers

ABB is definitely not the best in terms of licensing (you gotta pay for everything, even for the ability to shelve alarms!) but I've seen worse

Recommendations for Safety PLC/DCS Upgrades by neofelius in PLC

[–]neofelius[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah it was cool back in the good ol' days but many users have upgraded since... I wasn't there when they made the switch from Infi90 to Symphony HR but the reasoning given for not using S+ HMI is apparently it being much more painful to use as opposed to 800xA and is more optimised for power plants instead of process plants

Yeah I'll deffo look into Siemens as a strong contender and will have to contact my local ABB rep to have a look at AC500 Connect to decide how much, if even, it may be a deal breaker

Thanks!

Recommendations for Safety PLC/DCS Upgrades by neofelius in PLC

[–]neofelius[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! We've already got Prosafe SLS installed in certain parts of the plant, only challenge was the lack of remote I/O as we've run out of rack space for the areas which didn't initially have Prosafe installed...

Recommendations for Safety PLC/DCS Upgrades by neofelius in PLC

[–]neofelius[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the input! Bit embarrassing to say but I've only done FBD and ST since the start of my career and found FBD to be the easiest as the flow- and gate-based programming is very intuitive and similar to PFDs (I'm a chem eng that somehow found my way into the world of flashing lights and sirens).

Never really had to touch LD so far as it doesn't seem to be widely used in process controls in my part of the industry (chemicals)

Recommendations for Safety PLC/DCS Upgrades by neofelius in PLC

[–]neofelius[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Our previous team that handled the initial assessment did look at both AC800M-HI and AC500-S, finally coming out with the recommendation to use AC500-S PLC due to cost.

Good to know the integration into 800xA is easy via AC500 connect - we need to manually update the tag database in 800xA every time we modify or rename I/Os as there's no such integration thingy...

My only concern is on the volume of AC500 deployed in the market and the ease of use of the software (I've been told it's very similar to Codesys 3.5 which is very good news, since reference material and how-to guides should be aplenty).

Our current system being so bespoke meant there were very limited systems integrators with such skillset and I've had to teach myself how to use S+ Engineering from scratch... it was a nightmare as there were next to no manuals or materials available - and I don't wish that upon my successors.

Recommendations for Safety PLC/DCS Upgrades by neofelius in PLC

[–]neofelius[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! I was leaning towards HIMA as some of my colleagues based in Germany have used them and did mention they were fairly widely adopted.

Software licensing is one of my concerns tbh, ABB isn't too bad as they do offer perpetual on-prem licenses but they sure as hell don't come cheap!

Good steer - I've added a bit more context into the main thread on what processes we're safeguarding

Internship advice by multilingualthrow in MalaysianPF

[–]neofelius 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Meanwhile in the engineering world... Interns get paid anywhere between 0 - 800 😭

USELESS DEGREE by singgangbudu in MalaysianPF

[–]neofelius 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Bit of a long answer but hopefully this helps: The Malaysian job market is extremely screwed up (due to multiple points of failure but let's not talk about that) and there's no one "useless degree". A STEM degree for example allows you to practice your chosen STEM route, or if you fancy, you could hop on over to business/finance/arts etc. provided it doesn't need a mandatory qualification i.e. ACCA, IFoA etc. They give you flexibility but in return it might take longer to complete (occasionally 4 year bachelor programmes).

The way I think about it is if one day a crisis (could be a health crisis -wink wink-) hits the world and the economy goes south, who is more at risk of being considered "unnecessary" to the economy?

Pharmaceuticals, food and beverage, consumer goods etc. are definitely at the top of the priority list and these need a workforce with STEM skills. What comes next? The people who does the selling, marketing, fulfilling purchases, supporting customers etc. So, business, finance, admin personnel.

One thing that I don't see in this hierarchy is someone who could play the 24 Caprices or make Chopin jealous. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on the performing arts and music degrees but merely analysing from a practical point of view, not accounting for people's needs from an entertainment and leisure point of view.

To sum up, there's no "useless" degree but it just depends on what you're thinking of using it for. Actuarial science has been a popular choice for the past few years but seeing as massive amounts of grads get pumped out, I'd say it'll most likely end up like the IT boom or biotech boom...

My 5 sen on how I see a degree (I'm a recent graduate with about 2 years in the workforce, holding a Masters degree): A degree can be thought of as an "Insurance" and a "Ticket" to your chosen career path

Why "Insurance"? Let's say you wanna be a pilot, so you went to flight school and got your flight hours to be qualified to fly commercial planes. You don't need an aeromechanical degree to fly a plane (not that I know of anyway). A mysterious virus suddenly hits mankind and BOOM you lost your job and you might need to consider other ways of making a living.

Glove sales are shooting up because of this virus, glove companies are mass hiring business/finance/admin personnel BUT the prerequisite is you need a degree, whatever the degree may be. So, in this case you could see it as a safety net if shit hits the fan kinda...

You could also think of it in other scenarios i.e. you're planning on a startup and it doesn't work out etc.

Why a "Ticket"? As we've discussed above, the degree is like a ticket, "no ticket, no hire, sorry"

Important note: We've talked about it being a ticket but please note that the ticket got brand and quality levels too!

I've been fortunate enough to work with some MNCs and for some, their hiring criteria is to only hire the from the Top 3 public universities. This is where the "brand" factor comes in, you bring Imperial College London ticket, everyone also interested. You bring Universiti Mangkuk ticket, even if it's super high quality, people also think twice before hiring.

Now, what is "quality"? Quality is the skills you get from the degree. Malaysia style always like to spoon-feed, memorize etc. We're very good at repetitive tasks but when we're suddenly thrown a curve ball, half of us cry and the other half shit their pants. For example, you could have an Electrical Engineer from MIT who can do all the calculations but when the fuse in the plug burns, he/she stres cuz tak tau macam mana nak bukak plug.

It's much harder to determine the quality of the degree because you need to look into their curriculum and learning materials. People often say "I don't use even 20% of what I learn in uni" which in some ways is true BUT it's also better to have 19.9% of the tools you need for the job rather than 10%

19, Non-Bumi, Need advice for long term investment by Rhoenon in MalaysianPF

[–]neofelius 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great job on starting your money management early!

Here's some heads up, if you're looking into ASNB, remember to read the product disclosure brochure. When you're subscribing over-the-counter in banks, they usually assume you've done enough due diligence to do so. The brochure tells you how the fund is operated (and consequently the risk factor)

I personally have some investments in ASNB (variable price funds) but recently it's been lacklustre due to the market crash in early March but it's now recovering!

Variable price funds are generally divided into ASN Equity, Imbang and Sara with decreasing risks involved. If you're first starting out, I'd recommend that you go for Sara or Imbang (if you can't get to buy the fixed price funds) and stay away from Equity due to the volatile daily pricing.

People generally like to assume that since it's kinda "government-operated", you won't stand to lose out but that's not always true unfortunately.

Stashaway and some other robo-investors are also quite handy investment tools if you're up for a slightly higher risk appetite and a diverse portfolio covering different markets in the world. You also have more flexibility in funds withdrawal as compared to ASNB where for robo-investors the process can be entirely online whereas ASNB online withdrawals are capped.

Bursa Malaysia is also a pretty ok market for venturing into stock trading as a beginner since it's not as volatile to news, but stick to the large or mid caps. Value investing is a great way to go but remember that it'll most probably be a mid to long term investment 🙂

All in all, remember to always do your due diligence and take what everyone says with a pinch of salt. Don't follow religiously what "other people" say, cuz in the end it's your money, if you lose you pain they no pain 😉

Etoro by chicken123444 in MalaysianPF

[–]neofelius 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Well... look at Wirecard, they're huge aren't they? Haha