wat are the likely prolems that one could face in transforming from manual operation to computerised operation

Answer 1

You didn't give an example, so this is pretty broad. I hope it applies to your application.

1. Over-expectations. This is common from salesmen overselling the gain automation using their products can generate. If it is a true choice, don't just assume it will pay for itself or believe everything the salesman is saying is true. Do some research.

example 1 - my company marketed a boiler controller. tests and later performance showed the system typically paid for itself in less than 1 year from fuel savings (in some cases as little as 4 months!)

example 2 - a city was upgrading its water meters to be read over radio rather than having personnel read them. No quality issue. The radiounits cost $300 per meter. A typical meter reader read approx. 300 to 400 meters a day. You do the math. This will never pay for itself.

2. Product (engineering) problems. ie- the stuff doesn't work because of design faults in the manufacturers hardware. This is easy to get around. First, dont be the first few to try a new product, and definitely don't commit to a product that hasn't been released yet just because it has a feature you want. Second, ask the salesman for a list of the nearby businesses that have used his product and contact them directly.

example - I was on a large mining shovel control system upgrade (like those you see on discovery channel). The salesman way oversold the upgrade time (he promised complete upgrade in a couple of weeks). The controllers had major engineering problems from the vendor. The upgrade went 3 months over schedule. The mine lost millions.

3.Maintenance costs. This will almost always be underestimated. Get a list price for replacements of the components in your system and get an idea of how often they will neeed to be replaced from your ccontacts above.

4. The system doesn't meet expectations. In my experience, this is usually at least part of the fault of the customer. This is your system. Take a controlling interest. The first incarnation is too many voices. Define who in your organization will make the decisions. Make sure everyone in your organization and the contractor knows this. Set up internal meeting to go over suggestions and changes before presenting to vendo. The second is no oversight, in which case the vendor may drop off items. Stay involved. Be ready to give a thorough and realistic factory test. (This may not always just be the engineer - sometimes he isn't given the entire design criteria in a digestible format - things discussed in meeting with managers and salesmen don't always make it to the engineer.)

5. Maintainability. This can be a problem on several fronts. Your maintenance personnel may be resistant to the new system, they may not get quality training, or they may be incapable of making the transition. If nobody picks up the ball, be ready to hire capable people. You may have problems with support on some systems - phone is fine but sometimes you need a body on site - it can be tough to get a body on site on short notice if the vendor is using engineers who dont get overtime (and therefore making last minute calls off hours provides no financial advantage yet trashes their lives and other work duties).

You can do some things to alleviate this in the design stages. Most controls hardware has diagnostics which you can place on dedicated graphics (rather than expecting maintenance personnel to jump thru hoops). You can select hardware that will be more robust. You can use redundancy a lot. You can pull spare communications cableswhen you do the initial install. You can have fault ride thru capability. Where possible, you can place the hardwarein enviromentally friendly locations (quoting the specs back to the vendor wont help much when your controller is crashing weekly in 110 degree temps).

6. Stupid add ons. These ar usually expensive and requie a lot of engineering, but don't generate revenue. An example is realtime production tracking software. This is expensive and will continue to use a lot of IT resources, while often it does not increase productivity - it is just something the salesmen sell to upper level managers.



But remember, if the sytem makes financial sense, is well designed,and the customer ensures it meet their performance expectations, automation can make the difference between plants closing or prospering. In addition, sometimes it just pays in quality improvements or improvements in decreased materials and power.

Answer 2

a few points to be getting on with:

insufficient funding / budget overruns
insufficient technical skills to develop new system
lack of management support
lack of operational support
inadequate/incorrect design of computer system
data entry for historic data

Answer 3

Incomplete testing and improper design. Starting with a good, solid plan and then implementing and testing with smaller chunks is a way to combat this.

Answer 4

data entry, that would take a lot of time

Answer 5

proper spelling?