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I worked in this sort of space for awhile. You got it in your last paragraph. Downtime costs money. Not only does downtime cost money, service calls do too.
by sumtechguy 5y ago
I worked in this sort of space for awhile. You got it in your last paragraph. Downtime costs money. Not only does downtime cost money, service calls do too. You get a guy who knows exactly how to fix it out on site and he shows up and has the wrong part and he costs 200 bucks an hour. You can burn 4 hours just waiting for a part. We were having a lot of good luck adding some sensors, remote diagnostic, and pre-diagnostic. That way you could schedule a downtime for a part swap out and have the right part on hand. Programming and remote control was near the bottom of that money stack. Like you said most of the stuff is PLC and relay logic. Sometimes you get lucky and there is a decent computer in the middle and you can scan that, but be careful as the 485 line may already be saturated with commands.
- hinkley 5y agoIn many ways it’s akin to the reason why SLAs don’t mean shit when they’re business to business. Anybody who breaks even in using a tool doesn’t stay in business for long. They use a tool because the tool -all of the tools - plus the labor costs them a dollar for every 10 they can gross. Your $1000 a month service can hold up or straight up lose $50,000 in revenue, so don’t be surprised if I’m not that happy about you offering to cut us a check for $250 when your stuff shit the bed two days before a hard deadline. We want the money back guarantee because we think the specter of you making no money will motivate you not to fuck us over. Your guarantees mean next to nothing, and the manpower involved in getting and cashing that check might eat most of it up anyway.
- mc32 5y agoDepending on the industry downtime doesn’t only mean widgets aren’t getting built but also the wip widgets we were making have to be thrown out.