We are sometimes the cleanup crew. You come back to work after a weekend and find that your production line products are not working correctly. In our case, your label printers, barcode scanners and even RFID readers. What happened? Sometimes it is a power issue that could have been easily avoided.
If we build a project for you here at EMP, it should include a surge protector and maybe even a UPS with a surge protector. Sometimes they are DIN Rail mounted units that are built into the controls cabinet that we supply. This is a lesson that we learned the hard way in the early days. Install a project and we end up chasing strange bugs that occur at all different times. Put a surge protector on the system and all of the issues go away!
Another tip from our engineering group is to power down your devices over the weekend. Security threats often occur in the off hours. We also see people put usernames and passwords on post it notes on equipment, another bad idea.
The last tip is an obvious one that we preach all the time internally. Assume that all emails coming to your inbox are a scam and that someone is out to get you. Only after carefully vetting an email to be sure that the sender is really the sender, and checking the web address on a link should you ever click anything.
When the TV show Pawn Start was on TV, Rick at the Pawn Shop used to say, “It’s not that I don’t trust you, I don’t trust anyone”. Words to live by.
And if you do come in on a Monday morning after a spring storm to find things not working, give us a call, we will help get you back up and working again. www.emptechgroup.com is the best place to reach us.