What about the free one-day or two-day "PLC Seminars" available at my local distributor?

Well, the good news is that they're "free" – so our "short answer" advice is to go ahead and take advantage of them. The real question is: how much training will your people actually receive?

You don't have to sit through many of these sessions to realize what's actually going on. While maintenance technicians are usually welcome, the audience that's really being targeted are the engineering-type personnel who specify (and purchase) the distributor's products. Usually the textbook is the distributor's sales catalog – and the "training" turns out to be a series of feature comparisons between "Model-A" and "Model-B" products.

Anyway, based on the general idea that any training is better than no training – sign up and take the free ride. Especially if a decent lunch is provided. And definitely if some demo equipment will be available for some hands-on exercises. Everybody likes that part.

Now for the possible downside. In some plants the "powers that be" have a habit of considering these little seminars to be actual training classes. Each employee who attends one gets a checkmark next to his name – and is duly regarded as having received a proper dose of "PLC training" – for free. In some plants this approach is quite an issue when it comes time to justify an adequate training budget. But as long as that's not a problem in your plant, then the distributor's little seminars are usually pretty harmless.

The biggest issue is to realize that your maintenance technicians probably won't gain much in the way of useful troubleshooting skills from attending – but they might get a free lunch.

Note: If this hasn't completely answered your question, just contact us at:

843-437-1883          - phone

843-225-0512          - fax

ronbeaufort@gmail.com - email

© Copyright - R.H.Beaufort - Charleston, SC – Updated: May 14, 2008