Three months ago, I got a call while walking home from class in the last few weeks of the Spring semester. Immediately upon seeing the Chicago area code, I knew that this was the moment I had been waiting for—the decision from DMC for a marketing internship that coming summer! I was so excited to hear Jessica, my new boss, on the other end of the line congratulating me for getting the job. I called my parents to tell them the good news, "I’m moving to Chicago! I got the posit...

Continue reading →

SIMATIC S7 Graph is used for programming sequence logic in a graphical, flow chart representation. For those of us who have been programming sequences in ladder logic or SCL, Graph presents an alternative method that includes some built-in functionality. For those that haven’t used Graph (and maybe those who have!), I’ve put together some tips and tricks to help you develop quickly and efficiently. Pre/Post Instructions Pre and post-instructions run cyclically, before and after...

Continue reading →

React has quickly become one of DMC’s favorite tools for web frontend development due to it’s component-based structure and growing adoption. However, between the JSX syntax, component lifecycle, and state management, learning to use React effectively sometimes feels like learning a language in and of itself. Javascript’s spread operator sees a lot of use in DMC’s React applications due to its concision and versatility. Here are 5 of our favorite uses of the spread ope...

Continue reading →

Summer is ending and that means school will soon be back in session! The season of college football and all-night study sessions is fast approaching for students. Along with all the friends, fun, and school activities is one of the most exciting parts of DMC’s year - fall career fairs! DMC will be recruiting on-campus at 28 schools across the U.S. this year, and we want to meet YOU! Some major milestones we reached as a company in 2018 include adding our seventh office...

Continue reading →

So, you either had a system that was working and then a red light showed up, or you bought a used PLC and the fault light showed up. Here's how to fix the fault light.  If the "BATT" Light is Red You should replace the battery within a few days. You should keep the PLC running since the PLC will lose the program if it loses power for more than a few minutes without a battery (check your PLC manual for how to do this). If it's been red for more than ten&nbs...

Continue reading →

Visitors to DMC may notice our ever-changing "Quote Board," documenting the best engineering jokes and employee one-liners of the moment.

Continue reading →

"If this boat sinks, the company would be *in real trouble." This was the starting remark as DMC's Internal Operations team left Belmont Harbor on President & CEO Frank Riordan's boat. Every summer, employees are invited to take part in one of Frank's favorite hobbies. Boating on Lake Michigan is a wonderful time for us to enjoy each other's company and recognize the work we do throughout the year. On Wednesday, July 18, DMC's Chicago-based ...

Continue reading →

Why do we code PLCs, design HMIs, create complex SCADA networks? The short answer is - so that somebody can use them to get a job done. For an HMI to be useable, it must be readable. Readability isn't just a matter of word choice. Technical choices like text alignment, line width, or font size can make or break readability. Here are eight tips for ensuring readability in your HMIs:  1. Left-align Text Likewise, justifying text creates awkward g...

Continue reading →

DMC recently welcomed the Chicagoland LabVIEW Users Group back to our office. We love sharing information and expertise with other technical professionals in the Chicago area, and we've enjoyed hosting the LabVIEW community at our office for several years. For this meeting, we built on our NIWeek Presentations and heard developers from the Chicago area discuss their projects and findings. Presenters at the event included DMC’s Steven Dusing and Christian Owen, along with J...

Continue reading →

In previous posts I wrote about different Office 365 bundles as well as ways to purchase Microsoft Office 365 subscriptions directly from a Microsoft partner like DMC. Today, I want to go over Microsoft's newest bundled offering, Microsoft 365. Microsoft Office 365 gives companies the ability to purchase a bundle of Windows 10, Office 365, and the Enterprise Mobility + Security suite, with one per user/per month license. These bundles are geared towards IT departments and business ow...

Continue reading →

Every month at the DMC’s all-company meeting, a different regional branch debuts a new video informing the rest of the company of what’s new in their office. St. Louis took up the reigns recently with a spoof on the popular show Stranger Things. The video, featuring Patrick Corcoran (script), Chase Hollingsead (editing and script), and Caleb Stoll pokes fun at fishing and scam emails. Filming was a fun way to bring together the, then small, St. Louis office with its new employe...

Continue reading →

Visitors to DMC may notice our ever-changing "Quote Board," documenting the best engineering jokes and employee one-liners of the moment.

Continue reading →

The 2018 Siemens Automation Summit was held last month at the JW Marriott Beach Resort on Marco Island, Florida. Twelve DMC representatives from around the country met to attend the annual conference from June 25-28. Fresh off of the excitement of ten more of our engineers passing the Siemens Technical Certification exam, we arrived in Florida with an extra spring in our step. The team enjoyed a week full of excellent presentations (including some from our own enginee...

Continue reading →

Last month, DMC Houston went back to our roots and took the third Houston YOE to the rodeo. This year’s YOE-DEO featured a crew of DMCers from across the country and included stops at one-of-a-kind places you can only find in the Lone Star State.   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 Chica...

Continue reading →

In my last post I discussed Microsoft's Dynamics 365 for Sales offering. That app was geared towards enterprise-level CRM customers, and while it is significantly cheaper than its main competitor, Salesforce, it is still too expensive for many sales teams in the SMB (Small and Midsized Business) market. Almost two years after the original Sales app was released, Microsoft rolled out the SMB version of their sales app, Dynamics 365 for Sales Professional. The Sales Professional app is...

Continue reading →

The DMC Boston team recently took a break from their busy lives for an adventure at Yume Wo Katare—an unique lunch location in Somerville, MA. Seated in rows on wooden benches, all facing the kitchen, we were served heaping (and rather intimidating) bowls of ramen. Our server explained that Yume Wo Katare is not a ramen shop, but a dream shop. The massive portions are symbolic of the challenges that we each face in accomplishing our dreams—if we can conquer these bowls than we can...

Continue reading →

Last week, DMC saw an absolutely star-studded rendition of ASSSSCAT, the world’s longest-running improv show. The performance, which took place at the iconic Carnegie Hall, involved Tina Fey as the monologist and Amy Poehler, Matt Walsh, Ian Roberts, Matt Besser, Horatio Sanz, and Rachel Dratch as improvisers. The format of the show started with a suggestion from the audience. Then Tina Fey would ad-lib a monologue based off of that suggestion. After her monologue, the rest of the cast ...

Continue reading →

DMC recently took a break from day-to-day tasks to participate in one of our favorite company traditions, FedEx Day. Routine work on hold, our offices still brimmed with life and projects while everyone worked on whatever they wanted.  FedEx Day is always an opportunity for fun, learning, and collaboration, with only two catches: the project must in some way help to improve the company, and it must be deliverable by the end of the day. This year, our employees took on everything ...

Continue reading →

With IoT solutions becoming more and more important in product design, DMC has been very interested in the viability of wireless devices as tools to solve new problems. LoRa, is one of the new solutions that provide viable results for use cases that weren’t possible before. The Things Network is one of the prominent public examples of this technology that promises to enable a variety of new use cases. Naturally, we wanted to get more experience with this up-and-coming LoRa tech, by esta...

Continue reading →

Your code compiles, hardware config is all set, but you can't get rid of the red lights on the 400H system. Check the following before pulling out your soldering iron and green LEDs.    1. Are the rack switches correct? If you have no idea what I'm talking about, good news, this might be it! Take the second PLC off Rack 1 and look for an exposed switch on the back. Change it so it says "Rack 1" instead of "Rack 0". The default setting of the sw...

Continue reading →