{"id":6763,"date":"2019-07-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-05T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/slcontrols.com\/8-essential-elements-for-de-risking-an-automation-project\/"},"modified":"2021-10-15T09:49:55","modified_gmt":"2021-10-15T09:49:55","slug":"8-essential-elements-for-de-risking-an-automation-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slcontrols.k8s-stg1-global.sq1.io\/en\/8-essential-elements-for-de-risking-an-automation-project\/","title":{"rendered":"8 Essential Elements for De-Risking an Automation Project"},"content":{"rendered":"

Risks can enter an automation project at just about any stage. Those risks can result in serious consequences from budget and schedule overruns to unplanned downtime, disrupted supply chains, and more.<\/p>\n

Therefore, it’s important to de-risk your automation project<\/a> at every possible stage. This ensures errors are reduced to a minimum as well as ensuring the project delivers on expectations.<\/p>\n

De-Risking Your Automation Project<\/h2>\n

At SL Controls, our project delivery processes focus on de-risking at every stage, from the pre-automation phase through to final commissioning and testing.<\/p>\n

Central to this are eight essential elements to de-risking all automation projects.<\/p>\n

1. Proof of Principle<\/h3>\n

Proof of Principle (POP) involves proving the feasibility of a proposed solution achieving the desired outcomes for the project. It does this by demonstrating design robustness, performance, and quality characteristics offline so when the design is integrated into the project, confidence of success is higher.<\/p>\n

By going through the POP process, we can avoid pursuing goals or targets that are not feasible or achievable and, instead, allow project teams to make changes to achieve the desired outcome. This prevents wasted expenditure.<\/p>\n

2. Design for Manufacturing<\/h3>\n

Design for manufacturing (DFM) is most commonly used when designing new products or major iterations to existing products. It involves ensuring the product\u2019s design makes the product easy to manufacture within cost targets (i.e. targets assigned by leveraging the experience of Subject Matter Experts).<\/p>\n

In relation to an automation project, we adapt DFM principles to ensure we don’t just create a fancy automation solution. Instead, our goal is to develop an automation solution that fits user requirements as well as the resources and skillsets available to run and maintain it. It\u2019s also essential the solution we develop matches the budget available, plus we ensure it improves several key metrics, i.e. OEE<\/a>, safety, quality<\/a>, etc.<\/p>\n

3. User Requirements Definition<\/h3>\n

A User Requirements Definition is a document we create that specifies what you, as our client, expect the automation project to deliver. It’s not a technical document but should include, among other things:<\/p>\n