My biggest ever professional mistake. See I was a factory worker and working nights. That night one thing I had to do was put our product into a fancy oven. It would run for over 12 hours but at x temperature for a few hours, then y temperature for some more hours then z temperature for some more hours etc. I took about $90k worth of product(internal cost, not sell price) put them in the oven, went to the touchpanel pressed a button, did all the paperwork, and went home.
Day shift started at 6am, by 630 I got a phone call from the manager asking what the hell happened last night? I said nothing, everything went smoothly. He said well the oven is over 2x the max allowed temperature for the devices. See on the touch panel there was a button for “auto” that started the pre-programmed temperature cycle the button immediately below that just turned the heat on full blast untill manually turned off, no confirmation, no protection at all. I cost the company over twice my annual salary by pressing the wrong button on a touchpad.
Basically it was determined that it wasn’t my fault and was poorly designed. The touch panel got redesigned and shortly afterwards anything besides auto required entering a password. I wasn’t punished at all but probably took a few years off my life in anxiety and fear.
This is not the same thing at all but it reminded me of the one time I tried to turn off my mom’s baseboard heater where the numbers have worn off. She got home later that night and was like wtf why is my room ten million degrees.
That’s just how the production industry is, nearly every piece of equipment I work with has a touchscreen HMI. That is a very poor design choice tho to have the “auto” button right next to the “full temp fuck you” button, it should have been password protected from the start or at the very least on a different screen
Very clean. All the touchscreens are IP67 or better and can be wiped, washed, and sanitized very easily and repeatedly with minimal training. Ours are even pressure washed alongside the rest of the equipment during routine cleaning and maintenance.
Keyboards are more difficult to keep clean, have plastic bits that don’t show up on a safety metal detector on the line, and just in general aren’t needed when the only functions the operator really needs are start and stop.
Fair. I’ve just worked with field worker Toughbooks and hardened iPads in the past, and I didn’t really want to touch them lol. Sounds like they’re treated better in a factory
Yeah, factories have set schedules for cleaning and maintenance, and the HMIs just fall right in with everything else. The big thing is that all the modern stuff is computer controlled and usually remotely managed.
So, a worker would either enter an order on a computer and “print” to a line from there, or a central control room manages those jobs, or sometimes there might be a few different barcodes and a scan gun to select an entry from things posted on the wall or a book. Either way, the complexity doesn’t exist at the actual machine.
The worker then goes to the machine’s HMI, validates everything is ready and the order loaded, and hits start. Once done, the machine finishes and a report is logged.
Literally wash and rinse, if needed, and repeat!
Factories that are concerned with cleanliness and contamination concerns don’t allow compute devices to traverse onto the production floor and back, in my experience. You don’t see any traditional desktops or laptops there, nor mobile devices — even personal ones — or even ToughBooks as they’re not allowed. It just comes down to sanitation concerns and risk to the plant and product(s) being produced.
My biggest ever professional mistake. See I was a factory worker and working nights. That night one thing I had to do was put our product into a fancy oven. It would run for over 12 hours but at x temperature for a few hours, then y temperature for some more hours then z temperature for some more hours etc. I took about $90k worth of product(internal cost, not sell price) put them in the oven, went to the touchpanel pressed a button, did all the paperwork, and went home.
Day shift started at 6am, by 630 I got a phone call from the manager asking what the hell happened last night? I said nothing, everything went smoothly. He said well the oven is over 2x the max allowed temperature for the devices. See on the touch panel there was a button for “auto” that started the pre-programmed temperature cycle the button immediately below that just turned the heat on full blast untill manually turned off, no confirmation, no protection at all. I cost the company over twice my annual salary by pressing the wrong button on a touchpad.
Basically it was determined that it wasn’t my fault and was poorly designed. The touch panel got redesigned and shortly afterwards anything besides auto required entering a password. I wasn’t punished at all but probably took a few years off my life in anxiety and fear.
This is not the same thing at all but it reminded me of the one time I tried to turn off my mom’s baseboard heater where the numbers have worn off. She got home later that night and was like wtf why is my room ten million degrees.
Yeah having a touchpad controlling any machinery functions is stupid (cars included).
That’s just how the production industry is, nearly every piece of equipment I work with has a touchscreen HMI. That is a very poor design choice tho to have the “auto” button right next to the “full temp fuck you” button, it should have been password protected from the start or at the very least on a different screen
Pretty common for HMIs in a factory, in my experience. Keyboards are dirty and difficult to keep clean.
How clean are the touchscreens on a scale of “factory new” to “toddler grime”?
Very clean. All the touchscreens are IP67 or better and can be wiped, washed, and sanitized very easily and repeatedly with minimal training. Ours are even pressure washed alongside the rest of the equipment during routine cleaning and maintenance.
Keyboards are more difficult to keep clean, have plastic bits that don’t show up on a safety metal detector on the line, and just in general aren’t needed when the only functions the operator really needs are start and stop.
Fair. I’ve just worked with field worker Toughbooks and hardened iPads in the past, and I didn’t really want to touch them lol. Sounds like they’re treated better in a factory
Yeah, factories have set schedules for cleaning and maintenance, and the HMIs just fall right in with everything else. The big thing is that all the modern stuff is computer controlled and usually remotely managed.
So, a worker would either enter an order on a computer and “print” to a line from there, or a central control room manages those jobs, or sometimes there might be a few different barcodes and a scan gun to select an entry from things posted on the wall or a book. Either way, the complexity doesn’t exist at the actual machine.
The worker then goes to the machine’s HMI, validates everything is ready and the order loaded, and hits start. Once done, the machine finishes and a report is logged.
Literally wash and rinse, if needed, and repeat!
Factories that are concerned with cleanliness and contamination concerns don’t allow compute devices to traverse onto the production floor and back, in my experience. You don’t see any traditional desktops or laptops there, nor mobile devices — even personal ones — or even ToughBooks as they’re not allowed. It just comes down to sanitation concerns and risk to the plant and product(s) being produced.