From machine controls to factory software

In a factory, a machine that stops is a production line that stops. As a controls engineer in the Drive Unit factory at Giga Berlin, my job was to use software and hardware to keep machines available, reliable and easy to maintain.

In the software team, I built a middleware on the Ignition platform end to end, backend and frontend, connecting factory tools to the MES through APIs. It’s written in Jython, Python running on the Java platform. Before writing any code, I gathered requirements from stakeholders on the factory floor and worked with the team in the Netherlands to turn them into a design that fit how the factory actually works.

I spent two months at the Austin factory with the controls team, improving machine safety and working with vendors to raise machine availability and improve communication between machines and Tesla’s in-house systems. It also built a working link between the Berlin and Austin teams, so problems solved on one continent didn’t have to be solved again on the other.

I ran site acceptance tests for machines in Chicago and Italy, verifying equipment against its requirements before it reached the production line.

Beyond the numbers, the work made the factories easier to run and a better place to work.