Reverse Engineering Your Control System: Our Tips and Tricks
Your control system has been running for 25 years and it is now time to modernize. Before you can start your modernization, you need a clear picture of everything running in your current system, so you start looking for your documentation. At this point, you may realize you do not have any documentation. Or you may find that your documentation reflects the system as it was when it was installed. While someone may have thought to scratch a few notes in the margins of the design drawings or add a redline on a termination drawing for a point that was added years ago, can you trust that it is current?
To develop a complete picture of all the devices included and functions performed within your control system, you may need to implement some serious detective skills to reverse engineer the system especially since there is no magic bullet for getting what you need from the system. This blog provides our advice on how to reverse engineer your control system by taking what you know about it, no matter how little information that may be, and working from the outside-in to determine the functionality of each algorithm. From this sleuthing, you can then assemble the documentation you need to be prepared to properly maintain or modernize your control system.