Industrial Automation

Start Here — Which Problem Do You Actually Have?

Automation enquiries usually arrive as a symptom rather than a specification. This table routes the symptom to the work that fixes it.

What “Under One Roof” Actually Means

Every engineering company claims it. The difference only shows up when something does not work, so here is the concrete version.

An automation project touches process, controls, panels, power and often utilities at the same time. Those are usually four or five suppliers. Each is competent inside their own scope — and nobody owns the space between them.

ATMAN carries process engineering, automation, electrical and HVAC in-house, with panel design and build under the same contract. That is not a marketing line — it is the reason the interface risk stops being yours.

How We Work — Siemens Deep, Platform Open

Two things worth being clear about before you enquire, because they save everyone a wasted call.

• Siemens is our in-house platform. S7-1200 / S7-1500, TIA Portal, WinCC and WinCC Unified. Standalone programming and software development work is quoted on Siemens. Depth on one platform buys proven block libraries, a consistent house standard and real knowledge of how the platform behaves on a live plant at 2 a.m.
• Complete projects are undertaken on other platforms. Where a turnkey scope is built on Allen-Bradley, Mitsubishi or Delta we take the whole job — process design, panels, electrical, integration, commissioning and handover.
• You own what you pay for. Source code unlocked, documentation, tag lists, drawings. We do not lock clients into their own plant
• We will say what we will not commit to. Mixed-hardware estates, safety functions that belong in a safety system rather than standard logic, redundancy that is not justified — we would rather lose the line item than accept scope we cannot serve properly

Most of Our Work Is on Plants That Are Already Running

Greenfield automation is an engineering problem with a blank sheet. Retrofit is an engineering problem constrained by everything already installed, plus the fact that production cannot stop while you think about it. They are different disciplines and they are priced differently.

• The drawings will not match the plant. Every retrofit starts by establishing what is actually there
• The outage window, not the project duration, is the commercial number. We quote it explicitly
• Existing field wiring is retained wherever condition and documentation allow — rewiring a sound plant turns a manageable project into a shutdown nobody can afford
• Work is phased by area so no single outage carries the whole risk
• There is a written rollback position for every tie-in

How an Engagement Runs

Steps 2 and 3 are where projects are won or lost, and they are the two most often skipped by suppliers competing on price.

Eight Questions to Ask Any Automation Supplier

Including us. A supplier who answers all eight clearly is worth talking to whatever their price; one who cannot has priced a guess.

Our answers are on the linked pages above, in writing, before you call.