AutoMax

MrPLC Member
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About AutoMax

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  1.     Basically I'm required to work 40 hours a week minus holidays or vacation days.  I typically work 10-12 hours a day (again, compensated for overtime) so if I want a personal day I just take it.  I have actually missed a week of work due to illness, and was paid for that week even though I told the company it was unnecessary.     My general feeling is that if you're salaried and not compensated for overtime, you owe me my salary whether I'm at work or actually ill.  If you comp the overtime I don't mind you docking me for not being on the clock.  Of course, I call in sick only when I'm sick, I can see people abusing the system.  My employer is wise enough to tell people if they are sick not to come in so they don't infect the entire office.     I think a really key issue is controls engineers need to be extremely flexible.  We get called all the time and are always inconveniencing ourselves.  I routinely work holidays and weekends and get dragged out of bed at midnight.  I jump on planes at two hours notice or drive to Kentucky on an hours sleep.  I've been on vacation in California and cut it short because a limit switch failed and nobody could figure it out (true story).  Being a controls engineer is a pain in the ***.  So I want to be well compensated and if I want a day off because it's sunny and I want to wax my truck, I expect to get the day off.     A field service engineer from Rockwell bills at $225 an hour (non-emergency) and $175 an hour portal to portal travel.  I'm the cheapest person in the whole company compared to that...
  2. PLANT CONTROLS UPGRADE

        There are more headaches to this transition than you might imagine.  One thing to remember is the asynchronous I/O update on ControlLogix.  But I do recommend trashing all the legacy fieldbus equipment and implementing E/IP the at the same time you change a systems processor if possible.     I'm 10% through migrating 40 PLC5 processors and a couple hundred racks of RIO and PanelViews, maintaining the RIO after a processor change and then switching to E/IP on a per-rack basis.  It's a total headache, and I'm praying I can finish in a year.     And I'd migrate anything that was !@#$ DeviceNet even if the vendor still supported it...
  3.     I wasn't implying I made $300k a year, I was implying that was what you would have to pay me to accept those benefits.     My compensation includes a six figure base salary, paid overtime, sixteen paid holidays, one month of vacation, full health/vision/dental, essentially unlimited flex time, and annual bonuses.  I've only been at my current employer for a year and a half, but I've held similar positions at three Indiana companies over the last decade and all had similar benefits.   
  4.     For drives and servos Yaskawa can't be beat.  They support lots of fieldbusses as well.
  5.       FWIW-     I'm not far from Chicago, dagger, and I wouldn't remotely consider working for what you're offering unless you pay over $300k a year.      I'm guessing most of your staff is fresh out of college...