Many manufacturing IT projects do not finishCONTROL ENGINEERING China版权所有, not necessarily because they failedCONTROL ENGINEERING China版权所有, but because of changing requirementsCONTROL ENGINEERING China版权所有, changing business conditions, company mergers, or changes in products and processes. It's important to know when to fold a project, but it is equally important to know what to do when you fold a project.
        A manufacturing IT project contains more than just software. Any project, whether it's a PLC program, DCS program, MES system, SCADA system, HMI system, integration project, or a combination of these, will have: requirementsCONTROL ENGINEERING China版权所有, designsCONTROL ENGINEERING China版权所有, test plans, test cases, common libraries, documentation and coding standards, and other project artifacts. The project artifacts still have value because they represent the intellectual capital invested in the project that can be captured and made available for future projects.
        Typically, most project artifacts are kept only on desktop systems. At some stage in the project, these artifacts are copied to the target system or to a configuration management system. This is a risky approach because information will then be lost when the project is stopped. This is especially true if the project work is performed by contractors. As they will start looking for the next consulting opportunity once the announcement is made that the project is cancelled. Getting their attention and time to correctly document and save all of their work will be difficult, if even possible. For many projects, once the announcement is made, all outside contractors will be off the site by the end of the day.
        The best rule for any project is to capture all project artifacts in common storage and, if possible, place the artifacts in a Controlled configuration management system. If you are following the approach of engineers and programmers working in a local sandbo