Thursday, September 9, 2004

The Ladder Before the Degree


Editorial Retrospective 1993–2003:
The Ladder Before the Degree

In 1993, I had already completed my undergraduate coursework in record time — yet my thesis remained unwritten. Life, as it often does, rearranged the sequence of my logic. Before I could defend an academic paper, I was already debugging a real system.

A local food processing company noticed my fascination with networks and asked if I knew anything about PLC-2 and PLC-3. They were migrating their old relay logic and contactor banks to the emerging PLC-5 series with the help of a foreign consultant. I was young, uncertified, and curious — and somehow ended up assisting them. It was the first time I saw industrial control not as a circuit, but as a conversation between machines.

By 1995, I was part of the implementation team — building small GUI panels to complement the main system, bridging gaps the contractors had overlooked. No degree, no title — just the silent confidence that I could make logic flow. My first test program ran on a PLC-5 connected to pilot I/O racks, and I will never forget the moment the first green light turned on — a quiet affirmation that logic, when honest, always works.

In 1997, the full system came alive. I designed its HMI, and later extended the interface using Visual Basic 4.0 for viewer-only displays beyond the control room — years before “thin client” became a buzzword. Those screens, blinking in pale CRT light, were the first digital windows into a living process.

Then came 1998. The monetary crisis swept across Indonesia, taking salaries, dreams, and positions with it. I was let go — not because of failure, but because I had no formal degree. My younger brother and I left for Jakarta in search of work, carrying nothing but knowledge, faith, and an aging toolkit of logic and thermodynamics. And only then, after a years of real ladders and live circuits, did I finally have time to complete my degree.

By grace, I found my way into a subsidiary of Indonesia’s state-owned power utility (you may guess which one), tasked with reviewing ladder logic for a 10 MW power plant — including heat-mass balance and thermal efficiency analysis, subjects that had always fascinated me. Reading registers, tracing operations, and matching behavior with maintenance logs — that became my thesis, written not on paper, but in the rhythm of process and control.

When the company entered a period of financial transition in 2003, I had already moved on to a new chapter of my career, I moved on — to the organization where I still serve today.

Some people earn their diploma before entering the field.
I earned my field long before receiving the diploma.