Missed Design Opportunities? 

Integration – An act or instance of combining into an integral whole.

Integral – Necessary to the completeness of the whole.

You issue a request for a proposal to your control systems integrator on a conveyor handling system project for which you are the prime contractor. As usual, you’re under time pressure, so you ask the controls people to turn the quote around quickly. They are responsible for designing the control system, programming, building the panel, installation, and startup.

There is enough time for a little bit of back and forth communication, but for the most part the design is pretty standard, based on lots of experience with previous similar projects.

You eventually win the job and issue the purchase order to the controls team, they execute the project, and despite an occasional bump in the road, things turn out fairly well.

Does this sound like your typical project?

If so, maybe there are some missed opportunities. Maybe “integration” means something more.

The design of the system is fundamental to integration.  And not all designs are created equal. To create an exceptional design, what if we committed to more up-front interaction with the end users of the system so that it truly integrates with how they want to do business?

There are plenty of opportunities just in the example above for a different approach:

• More conversation between the overall systems integrator with the control systems integrator
• More conversation between the systems integrators and the people who will use the system every day
• More conversation with the people that will maintain the system
• More conversation with the people that initiated and approved the project to understand their goals
• More sharing of best practices with the end-user because they may not be fully aware of what’s possible
• In short, an investment of more time to get a more complete understanding of what’s needed

After all of this conversation, do you have any doubt that the overall project would be a better product for the end user, one that is more integral to their success?

At Pendant, we believe in executing exceptional projects. We also believe that investing time at the beginning of a project as described here saves time in the long run, and greatly reduces the risk of producing a “pretty good” project.

Give us a call.

But only if you have time to save yourself some time…

Help me deliver an exceptional project