What About SPEED?INTRODUCTIONThe intent of this article is to bring awareness to the matter of speed and how it can be addressed early in a project rather than being surprised somewhere during development or worse yet commissioning. Have you ever been bitten by speed in delivering an automation project?  How do you determine whether speed is going to be an issue in an automation project?  What do you look at to determine speed constraints? I would venture a guess that most, if not nearly all, of those reading this blog will have been challenged by some speed constraint in their past projects.  In my own history I have had more than one occasion where I have had a “collision” with speed.PROJECT INITIALIZATIONSo where might you expect speed to be a problem? I always look at packaging lines with a cautious eye.  Communication interfaces can have an impact on batch execution or order downloads or usage uploads or data collection, etc. Servos, vision systems, batching systems, machine control can all have their speed challenges.EXAMPLE IThere may be elements in any packaging line that challenge the limits of …