This
page is intended to give you enough information to make the best possible
investment in PLC training. We’ve made several point-by-point comparisons
to show just some of the differences between “what we teach” and “what
they teach” based mainly on what we’ve heard from our customers. Take a
look at what we offer – and then check out our competition. After you’ve
made your own comparison, we hope that you’ll give us an opportunity to prove that our training is better than anything else
available. Then after you’ve tried us, decide for yourself whether or not
you’re satisfied. If you’re not, we’ll give you your money back. Period.
We cover only useful
technician-level job skills
All of the material covered in our
“PLC Boot Camp” classes (100% of it) is focused on the needs of
maintenance technicians. One of our major objectives is teaching
technicians how to interpret the PLC’s ladder logic program as an aid to
troubleshooting malfunctioning machinery. We present the PLC as one part
of an overall system which consists of the field inputs, the PLC
controller, and the field outputs. In the days before PLCs, any
competent electrician could simply follow the hardwired connections
between the system components and eventually track down a problem. In
today’s systems, following the connections usually involves the PLC.
Technicians who have no experience accessing and interpreting the PLC’s
ladder logic program are at a distinct disadvantage. Experienced
maintenance managers realize why it takes so long for some of their
technicians to track down the source of a problem to a simple field
input. Often it turns out that the technician traced the problem as far
as the PLC - and then didn’t know how to proceed from there.
Our “PLC Boot Camp” courses cover job
skills which are useful for technicians troubleshooting the PLC as part
of a complete system.
Many competitors concentrate on system
specifications
If you’re like most maintenance
managers, you’re sick and tired of sending your technicians off to “PLC
training” sessions which turn out to be nothing more than “sales pitch”
seminars. The text book is generally the manufacturer’s product catalog
– and the course merely compares the specifications and capabilities of
Model-X with Model-Y. Another common twist involves the “internal
components” courses which cover trivial topics such as the type of
Motorola or Zenith chip used inside the PLC processor. Now these
sessions might possibly be useful to the engineers who design new
systems – but the information in them is absolutely worthless to a
maintenance technician troubleshooting a PLC-controlled system when the
pump won’t run.
The “PLC Boot Camp” courses that we
offer are focused totally on usable job skills for plant maintenance
technicians. We won’t waste your time on anything else.
We fully cover the processor’s scan
sequence
One of the very first lessons that we
teach in our five-day "PLC Boot Camp" classes is a detailed
understanding of the processor’s scan cycle. Our students are repeatedly
drilled to perform a step by step analysis of how the field inputs are
sampled, how the ladder rungs are executed, and how the field outputs
are controlled. The effort invested in these exercises is repaid many
times during the class and will also form a firm foundation for future
learning throughout the rest of the technician’s career. We’ve found
that the vast majority of students – even those with years of experience
– come into our classes with serious
misconceptions
about these critical ideas. Once these barriers to understanding have
been removed, the student discovers that issues which once seemed so
baffling and confusing have suddenly become crystal clear. For many of
our students, removing the mystery of what goes on “under the hood” is
the all-important key to fully understanding PLCs after years of
frustration - and we cover this critical lesson before lunchtime on
Monday morning.
Even students with many years of
previous experience find our “PLC Boot Camp” courses to be highly
enlightening – even during the very first lessons.
Many competitors teach popular
misconceptions
Most of the students in our classes
have already been through some amount of training provided by a
competitor of ours – often with disappointing results. In many cases we
find that this training has contained subtle but important errors. A few
common examples: “an XIC instruction examines a switch for an on
condition” - “an OTE instruction controls an output” – “green highlights
on the screen mean that a condition is true” – and more along the same
lines. The most confusing thing about these incorrect statements is that
they are all “close enough” to work in the majority of cases – but
unfortunately not in all. The technician who completely relies on these
popular misconceptions inevitably runs into situations now and then where the PLC’s
operation seems to make absolutely no sense at all. Naturally the
resulting confusion costs extra troubleshooting time and effort - and
also damages the technician’s self-confidence. It's hard to get the job
done when you start to second guess every move you make.
Our “PLC Boot Camp” courses are
specifically designed to correct any misconceptions that the students
have previously come to accept.
Our classes develop problem-solving
skills and self-confidence
Students in our classes are
continuously exposed to one realistic problem after another. This
obviously provides many opportunities to incorporate problem-solving
exercises directly into the classroom activities. As the students work
through their assigned hands-on projects, the instructor constantly
coaches them to develop a systematic approach to finding solutions for
the problems they encounter. Lucky guesses and “hunt and peck” methods
are discouraged in favor of step by step procedures which are certain to
prove more reliable once the students have returned to work at the
plant. In addition to developing problem-solving skills, we feel that
improving each student’s self-confidence is immensely important
throughout the training process. All of the knowledge that any student
possesses is practically worthless without the self-confidence required
to make use of it. Of course, self-confidence is best developed by
personally tackling and overcoming obstacles. By exposing each student
to one problem after another, our classes present many opportunities for
building self-confidence.
Our “PLC Boot Camp” classes improve
the students’ problem-solving skills and develop the self-confidence
required to apply their new abilities on the job.
Most competitors neglect
problem-solving and self-confidence
While some of our competitors do offer
hands-on classes, the lab sessions in these often turn out to be short,
pre-canned affairs which offer little opportunity for the students to
develop their problem-solving skills. In fact, most instructors try to
prevent any problems from ever occurring in the first place. The lengthy
lecture that precedes each lab session usually contains all of the step
by step instructions required for the student to proceed flawlessly
through the exercise without any trouble at all. In addition, some
classes actually provide written instructions – complete with computer
screen shots – which detail exactly how to proceed through the exercise.
Any student who deviates from the script is usually guided right back
onto the appointed path by the instructor – in an effort to keep the
class on schedule. So - what happens when the students return to work
and have no one handy to guide them?
Our “PLC Boot Camp” courses are
specifically designed to develop the problem-solving skills that are
neglected by most of our competitors. We provide opportunities for our
students to build their self-confidence by overcoming realistic
obstacles that other classes fail to provide.
Our classes include wiring
exercises for both discrete and analog signals
Most technicians in today’s plants
must be able to work effectively with both discrete type and analog type
I/O signals. All of our five-day “PLC Boot Camp” classes cover both of
these types of signals in detail. Each student completes a series of
hands-on wiring exercises to connect various input and output field
devices to the PLC. For many students these wiring exercises form a
crucial point on their learning curve. What sounds like a simple
assignment to connect things such as buttons, switches, lamps, and
contactors to the PLC can become quite challenging when a pre-printed
wiring diagram isn’t provided. For many students, this particular series
of exercises brings into sharp focus such critical concepts as how the
PLC processor interacts with its input and output field devices – and
how the I/O addressing scheme relates to the PLC’s data tables. Once the
initial wiring has been completed, each student works through several
programming projects which make use of the inputs and outputs. Important
concepts such as TRIAC leakage current and proper wiring for failsafe
operation may easily be demonstrated by simply disconnecting or
rearranging a wire or two. Students become familiar with processing
analog signals by programming exercises such as mathematical scaling and
basic data collection.
Our “PLC Boot Camp” classes use actual
hands-on wiring exercises to help the students understand the
relationships between field I/O devices and the PLC processor. For some
students just physically making the connections between field I/O
devices and the PLC provides a crucial mental link between theory and
practice.
Most competitors neglect wiring
exercises completely
Most of our competitors fail to
include any hands-on wiring exercises in their PLC classes at all.
Unfortunately their students miss out on many opportunities to tie the
PLC system together both physically and mentally. The all-important
interrelationships between the field hardware devices and the
indications on the computer screen just never really make sense for some
students until they actually make the physical wiring connections for
themselves. By ignoring real-world exercises such as these, our
competitors’ “hands-on” classes might more accurately be called
“fingers-on” classes instead. When you get right down to it, their
students never touch much more than the computer keyboard and the mouse.
Our “PLC Boot Camp” classes use
hands-on wiring exercises to provide important learning opportunities
that other vendors neglect.
Want to know more?
The comparisons above are just a few
of the differences between our "PLC Boot Camp" classes and the
“training as usual” approach used by just about everyone else. Whether
you’re a plant maintenance manager looking for effective PLC training
for your technicians - or a PLC instructor at an accredited tech school
– or a prospective student - if you’d like to know more, please get in
touch with us. We’ll be happy to discuss our techniques with you by
phone, or possibly offer you a chance to sit in on one of our classes
for free. This really works! If it didn't, we wouldn't guarantee it.
For more information, or
to register, just contact us at:
