The system I am working with has seen an increase in the number of PLM watchdog failures in recent months. The failures are temporary and intermittent, and effect every active phase, (though every phase is on the same controller).
Compared to the previous 4 years of run time information in which only 1 occurred, I have seen six in the last 2 1/2 months.
I am concerned that the disconnection of a pair of OOS controllers that coincided with the rise in incidence of the failures is the cause.
I am suggesting to have the controllers decommissioned from the database (so the event log can stop filling up with disconnection messages, to prevent everyone from going alarm blind, and generally to do the right thing), but if there is reason to believe this situation is jeopardizing running batches, that would certainly require action.
Now, the units on these disconnected controllers do not run batches, but there is some referential breaks from active controllers and modules on the disconnected ones (which won't be solved by decommissioning).
Do I have any reason to believe the disconnected controllers are contributing to the PLM failures, or is it more likely the broken references, or neither?
Thanks.