rcwsun

Retired Industrial Automation Engineer.
My professional career began in IT after my graduation in 1982 from a BSc., in Computer Science in UK. I moved to Vancouver Canada to join my family in 1985. A degree in Computer Science was already obsolete and useless as all I learned was the main frame and mini computers. North America had progressed to micro computers. Main frame jobs were being slashed. And, I was a dinosaur.
So, I enrolled in a 6 months course to retrain my self for employ-ability. I bought my first IBM compatible XT PC in 1987. The investment of a $4,000 PC was the turning point of my professional career with IT skill-set that lasted to December 2015.
I switched to industrial automation at around 1996 when I was working on a project involving automating inventory management system at a plant floor level. In those days, plant floor IT was only affordable by large corporations (GM, Chrysler, Boeing...). I took on the challenge by automating a seamless integration of data from the plant floor to administration office for the invoicing system without manual input. The integration eliminated data-entry errors and improved efficiencies and the rest was history.
In 1999, I pursued my career with a company building grain handling systems in electrical automation. I became the lead on the IT side to manage data for grain handling inventory system. I personally designed a weigh capturing system from industrial scales to record weights into a database for shipping purposes.
My claim of fame is the ability to load 10 millions metric tonnes of barley onto 112 rail-cars, each with a capacity of 90K tonnes in an 8 hours work shift. That is at a rate of 1.26 million tonnes per hour on to 14 rail-car per hour. That means loading 90,000 tonnes of grain in under 4 minutes per rail-car. The loading weight recorded must be legal for trade and for custody transfer certified by Weighs and Measures CANADA.
In 2004, I officially switched to engineering industry for mining, oil & gas, heavy industrial, institutional sectors. I was assigned for projects mostly in Europe and travelled all over the world for IT related industrial automation projects.