The DMC Tampa Team 

We view Tampa as a great hub to expand in the Southeastern region of the United States. Working with partners in the area, we see potential for growth in several markets in Florida and the surrounding states. 

I will be relocating to the Tampa office and will be joined by a strong team of experienced engineers. Our diverse engineering skill set will ensure that this team is fully capable of delivering DMC’s range of service offerings locally. We will have engineers with many years of experience with Manufacturing Automation & Intelligence and Test & Measurement Automation as well as knowledgeable in Embedded Development & Programming and  Digital Workplace Solutions. 

We look forward to continuing to grow relationships throughout the region, including in the Entertainment, Aerospace & Defense, Medical & Pharmaceutical, and Food & Beverage spaces.  

New Opportunities 

We are excited to expand into a different and unique market. Aside from professional opportunities, we look forward to enjoying Florida’s second-largest metro area. We’ll explore the region’s white sand beaches, state parks, and the Gasparilla Pirate Festival while enjoying the sunny weather, zero state income tax, professional sports teams, and fresh seafood. 

Opening an office in Tampa is part of DMC’s long-range strategic plan for expansion. Our increased workload and client base across the U.S. have resulted in this vision becoming a reality, and it is with great pride that we make this announcement. 

Tampa will join 14 other DMC locations across the country in serving our clients. Founded in Chicago in 1996, DMC celebrated its 29th anniversary this year. 

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I’m excited for the opportunity to lead the new DMC Dallas team. After assisting DMC’s expansion to Boston and then helping to start the office in Houston, this is a wonderful opportunity for me both personally and professionally. Having briefly lived in Dallas during college, I look forward to returning and living near family and friends in the Dallas area. 

Why Dallas?

We look forward to continuing to grow relationships throughout the region, including in the Food & Beverage, Oil & Gas, and Materials Handling spaces. 

Our initial team size will be 3-5 engineers, with plenty of room to grow. Developing a business in a new market offers unique challenges and opportunities for professional growth. Each engineer joining the Dallas team will also help define the office culture by planning Yearly Office Events, Activity Fund Events, Holiday Parties, and even programming-related music videos! 

Aside from professional development opportunities, we look forward to enjoying the country’s 4th largest metro area and the 5th best city for young professionals. We’ll explore the hometown of the Texas State Fair and the original Six Flags amusement park while enjoying the warm winters, zero state income tax, kolaches, and Texas barbecue that I’ve become accustomed to during my time in Houston.

I’m excited to share some of my favorite local events like two-stepping at Billy Bob’s, visiting the Fort Worth Stock Yards, biking the Katy Trail, and cheering on Dallas teams in every professional sport!

We are already hiring in Dallas. Let me know if you are interested in joining the DMC Dallas team!

I am thrilled to be embarking on this new journey and eager to experience all the BIG things Dallas has to offer!

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Food and Beverage Digitalization Day aims to share industry best practices that spur innovation through digitalization. A series of panels and presentations will address ways to increase productivity and efficiency, increase performance, improve safety and quality, and increase sales and customer focus.

DMC Project Director Nick Shea will speak on the Executive Panel. This forum gathers industry experts to speak about and explore the future in Food and Beverage manufacturing. The panel will discuss best practices, new technologies and the outlook for digitalization in food and beverage.

Event Details and Registration

November 28, 2018
8:30 am – 5 p.m.

Hackberry Creek Country Club
1901 W Royal Ln.
Irving, TX 75063

Agenda

8:30 – 9 am:  Registration/Breakfast
9 – 10 am:  MIT Professor Anthony on SMART manufacturing and how it relates to F&B
10 – 11 am:  Executive Panel (including DMC Project Director Nick Shea)
11 – 12 pm:  Presentation: Driving the Digital Enterprise for Food & Beverage
12 – 1 pm:  Lunch / visit the Digital Showcase and demo walls
1 – 2 pm:  Presentation: Getting started with OMAC PackML for Packaging Machines
2 – 3 pm:  Seminar: Modernization Made Easy (MME) session
3 – 5 pm:  Networking event with guest appearance from DMC’s DrinkBot

DMC’s DrinkBot

The event will conclude with a networking session featuring DMC’s DrinkBot. DMC engineers created the DrinkBot to demonstrate some cool capabilities and the Siemens S7-1200 platforms’ potential uses and abilities.

DMC’s DrinkBot utilizes a Siemens S7-1200 PLC, 7″ Comfort Panel, Siemens G120, and Siemens 1FK7 Servo Motor with DRIVE-CLiQ encoder to control the operation. The DrinkBot provides eight different alcohols or syrups and six different mixers for a large variety of drink options – anything from cocktails to Italian sodas!

Don’t forget to stop by DMC’s booth and say hello. We hope to see you at Food and Beverage Digitalization Day!

Learn more about our partnership with Siemens and our work in the food and beverage industry.

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What is a YOE Anyway?

DMC’s YOEs, or Yearly Office Events, are a partially sponsored gathering of DMC employees and their friends that each of our offices hosts near their location.

In Denver, we hit the ski slopes, in Chicago, we go to the lake, Boston likes to head to the shore, and our newest offices will have their first YOEs soon. Previously, DMC Houston has hosted a Houston Rodeo YOE (2016) and a San Antonio YOE (2017).

Houston…We Have a Party!

This year the party got started with most of the crew arriving on Wednesday afternoon. We kicked things off with a crawfish boil hosted and prepared by DMC Houston’s Head Sheriff (Project Director) Jason Mayes. For many, it was the first time experiencing this spicy, southern delicacy, colloquially called “mudbugs.” 

After dinner, we headed to Midtown to partake in a “Pedal Pub” ride. A team of 16 people at a time (including a bartender) worked together to pedal the giant, bike bar around a handful of Midtown’s hottest bars. This year even featured a stein race at the German-themed Bar Munich.

Target Practice

On Thursday the crew headed out to George Bush Park to partake in one of Texas’s long-running traditions: shooting guns! Everyone tried their hand at obliterating some clay pigeons on the shotgun range, and a smaller crew spent some time at the rifle range as well.

Giddy-Up to the Rodeo 

Later that evening, we drove out to Crosby, TX to check out the Crosby Fair and Rodeo. The Crosby rodeo hosts all the events you would expect: steer wrestling, team roping, saddle bronc riding, bareback riding, barrel racing, bull racing, and, of course, mutton-bustin’. 

Following the rodeo, DMCers got a taste of some Texas country music with performances by up-and-coming artists Adam Hood and Parker McCollum.

Heading West to Hill Country

After a late night at the rodeo, the group got up early and piled into the DMC Houston office for our monthly all-company meeting. Following the meeting, we jumped into a Westbound caravan to check out the Texas Hill Country with an obligatory stop at Buc-ee’s along the way. 

A group went to explore the natural swimming holes at McKinney Falls State Park, while the rest of the crew headed to Wimberly Valley Winery to sample some Texas wines. After sampling all they had to offer, we picked up a barbecue feast featuring one of Texas’s oldest and most famous pit BBQ restaurants, The Salt Lick.

McKinney Falls

Wine Tasting 

The night carried on at a lake house in Seguin, TX, with a variety of card games, board games, swimming, and even a bit of dancing on the deck!

Floating the Guadalupe

Saturday morning kicked off a small group participating in a Beer Mile competition. Afterward, we hopped onto our very own party bus to ride in style to Horseshoe Bend on the Guadalupe River; a trip complete with car karaoke, dancing, and one emergency stop at Buc-ee’s.

The party didn’t miss a beat as we set off down the river in our tubes. Cold beverages kept us cool on the journey as we made our way down the river, stopping at the famed Party Rock. 

When we all returned to the house, we continued the evening with a cookout followed by more games, swimming, and relaxation.

Sunday morning came too soon, and the group packed up to make our way back to the lands from which we hailed. 

Back in Houston, we are now anxiously awaiting the 2019 Houston YOE-DEO!

Explore more fun stuff going on at DMC. 

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Still half asleep, the DMC Houston crew + Stephanie rolled out of bed at 4am on a Sunday morning and headed South. By 6am we were aboard the S.S. Sharky with Captain Mike and First Mate Tanner. The initial plan was to head about 10 miles offshore in search of some monsters. Mother Nature had other plans, however, as the four foot swells prevented us from reaching the deep water. Instead we weighed anchor up next to the jetty and cast our lines. It wasn’t more than 2 minutes before we got our first bite. The next five hours were filled with a steady stream of sand and speckled trout, sheepshead, ladyfish, toadfish, perch, Spanish mackerel, and one monster black drum! Check out our awesome video!

Leigh got soaked on our way out!

Stephanie landed the biggest catch of the day: Black Drum

Group photo with the day’s haul.

Learn more about DMC’s company culture.

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A recent DMC project for an OEM machine builder involved automatically generating log files for each machine. The twist? Each log file needed to be unique and easily traceable to the machine that generated it. This can be achieved using the PLC serial number and/or MAC address, and Siemens has a built-in System Function Block (SFB52 – RDREC) that can be used to extract this data.

First let’s take a look at the block and its inputs.

• REQ: Boolean input to request a Read.

• ID: Hardware identifier of the hardware module to read from (can be found by going to PLC tags -> Show all tags, and selecting the System constants tab). I want to read the PLC’s serial number so I’m using PLC_1[Common].

• Index: This is the data record number. To read the serial number, the index happens to be 16#AFF0.

• MLEN: Maximum length (bytes) to read from the data record.

• RECORD: This is the destination where the read will be stored. This MUST be greater than or equal.

After executing the read, you will then need to parse the data in order to obtain the relevant information. In the example above, we read 100 bytes from the 16#AFF0 data record of PLC_1. The serial number is stored in bytes 28-44. Using SFC222 (Chars_TO_Strg), I was able to extract the serial number into a string that was easily included in the log file.

You can use SFB52 with an S7-1500 PLC as well. Additionally, you can read more than just the serial number of the PLC. A few examples with their associated parameters are shown below:

Learn more about DMC’s Siemens PLC Programming Services.

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We spent the morning having discussions with some of the more experienced DMCers in Christopher Columbus Park. We set up picnic blankets on the grassy lawn, and learned things like how to maintain a friendly work environment, how to entertain and thank clients, and a lot of general tips and tricks to being a great consultant. In the afternoon we weighed anchor and tried our hand at sailing races (but not before squeezing in a picnic lunch from Jimmy John's and free ice cream from a nearby ice cream truck). 

A sailing race begins with a 5 minute countdown where all sailboats jockey for ideal placement. The goal is to be passing through the starting line at full speed when the countdown hits zero. Professional sailors manage to do this with absurd accuracy and skill.  Since this was nearly everyone's first time sailing, we only managed to point our boat roughly in the correct direction, but our competitive spirit heated up quickly anyways.

We split into four teams and set sail into the Atlantic Ocean after a quick training session with our captains. The teams competed in a regatta around Spectacle Island (a small island just off the Boston coast, so-named for its eyeglass shape). The island apparently has berry-picking, a potential future activity. The course also went right by Logan Airport, so we spent 3 hours watching jet and turboprop planes flying directly overhead. Dan Freve (manager of the Boston office and an experienced sailor) and his team took an early lead with their mastery of tacking. This involves sailing at alternate 45 degree angles to effectively sail upwind. Right on their stern, however, was a sailboat led by Houston office manager, Jason Mayes.

It was at this point that we switched from sailing upwind to downwind which requires changing one of the sails. It was neck and neck right up until we rounded Spectacle island, where the race opened into a close race for first and second with third place straggling behind. A smooth transition from the Jib to the Spinnaker allowed Jason’s boat to pass, and they did not look back on their way to the finish line. A post-regatta celebration was held at Granary Tavern in downtown Boston where us land-lubbers enjoyed some grog and merriment. We spent the rest of the night bar-hopping until 2am and arguing over who really won the race.

Learn more about DMC's company culture.

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The Drinxperiment was constructed using a Siemens S7-1500 PLC, a Siemens S7-1200 PLC configured using I-Device, a Siemens KP8 key panel, standard 24V solid state relays, 12V peristaltic pumps, and two Philips Hue light bulbs. While the hardware configuration could have been much simpler, we used this project as an opportunity to showcase some of the capabilities of Siemens hardware. The S7-1500 in our lab was chosen as the main PLC because it had firmware release V4.0, which allows configuration of permissions for a generic user (ie-anyone with the link to the website is able to modify PLC tags and order a drink!). We incorporated the S7-1200 PLC as remote IO using I-Device in order to utilize the built in relay outputs. The KP8 key panel became our HMI for manual control that enabled us to prime the peristaltic pumps.

The Philips Hue lightbulbs have a built in controller and Wi-Fi bridge, which enabled us to change the bulb color using a standard HTTP post each time a guest ordered a drink. The user interface is a web page that is hosted on the S7-1500 PLC, which enables a user to read and modify PLC tags via HTTP posts. In other words, you can order a drink using your smartphone! All of the drink recipes were thoroughly tested by DMC experts prior to the party in order to maximize user satisfaction.

Learn more about DMC's Siemens S7 PLC programming expertise.

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On my second day of work I was sitting in a meeting to kick off a new project that I would share responsibility in completing. Since that day, it’s been nothing but excitement. I’ve worked on a variety of different projects, numerous of which have been on various platforms (Siemens and Allen-Bradley PLCs, microcontrollers, and PICs). 

It’s been a unique and exciting experience so far, especially when I was given the opportunity to work on a commissioning project in China. I have always been a fan of travelling to new places; so, naturally, I jumped at the request. A few weeks and a twelve hour plane ride later, I was walking into a factory in Guangzhou, China. 

It was a great three weeks filled with eating unusual food, attempting to speak Mandarin, and (most importantly) completing a large portion of a multi-phase project.

Working at DMC has been a challenging, but fulfilling experience. Since Day One I’ve been surrounded by some of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and they’re always willing to share their knowledge with a young DMCer like me.

Learn more about the industries DMC serves.

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