When experience and engineering judgement matter as much as platform skills.
I'm Ricardo Tedeschi. I've spent 30 years delivering PLC, HMI and motion control systems across energy, food & beverage, FMCG and pharma - from requirements specification through to site commissioning. I take on a small number of projects each year and work directly with your engineering team.
If you need someone who can be trusted with the difficult work - complex integrations, safety-critical applications, validated systems, undocumented legacy systems - that's what I do.
Multi-vendor systems, safety-critical applications, robotics integration, and coordinated motion. The projects where getting it wrong has real consequences.
Read more →New PackML frameworks from scratch, cross-platform translation between Siemens, Rockwell and Beckhoff, and extension of existing implementations. ISA-TR88 done properly.
Read more →Migrating from S5, S7-300, PLC-5, SLC-500, or other end-of-life platforms to modern controllers. Reverse engineering, retrospective documentation, and minimal production downtime.
Read more →PLC and HMI systems for pharma, medical devices, and life sciences. I work within validated environments and produce documentation to the standard your quality team and your customers expect.
Read more →Most of the controls engineers available through agencies are adequate for routine work. But not all work is routine.
You've probably experienced it. A contractor who can follow a functional spec but can't write one. Code that works in simulation and falls apart on site. Documentation produced as an afterthought that won't survive a customer audit. A safety system configured by someone who passed the training course but has never been responsible for a machine that could hurt somebody.
These aren't rare problems - they're the norm. The demand for automation engineers far outstrips the supply of good ones, and the gap is filled by people with platform training but without the project experience or engineering judgement to apply it well.
I don't solve every controls engineering problem. But for the projects where the technical standard genuinely matters - where the code needs to be right, the documentation needs to hold up, and the person writing your software needs to understand why - I can help.
Representative examples from recent years. Happy to discuss specifics over a call.
Led the development team and co-developed the controls for a five-robot lens handling system - Staubli four- and six-axis robots, Beckhoff PLC, Festo electric actuators, and Xplanar transport. Touch-free transfer of lenses and precision inspection where defects aren't an option.
Two machines for intra-ocular lens production: mould welding and tray loading, then mould splitting and lens transfer. Per-unit tracking and data collection feeding customer SCADA. The original team's code was unworkable - I rewrote the tracking system from the ground up while the wider team tackled extensive rework across both machines under my guidance. Siemens platform.
Lead developer on a large-scale battery cell production system spanning two floors of a clean room. Siemens PLC with Festo MCS providing micron-accuracy transport through multiple process stations as cells were built up layer by layer. Novel process and product - no existing playbook to follow. Co-lead of a team of around 15 software engineers.
Designed and led the development of a standard PackML template for Siemens projects - structured to minimise engineering effort on new machines through reusable infrastructure, parameterised arrays, and alignment with the company's mechanical platform standards. Now the foundation for all Siemens projects across the business.
Sole developer on a bottle de-palletising and conveying line. Included a servo-driven chain hoist lifting over a tonne of machinery and product - a challenging piece of motion control with significant safety implications. Siemens.
Lead developer on a three-machine line manufacturing carbon filters for respiratory masks. A rotary cutter and robot handled flexible rubber plenums, ultrasonic welding bonded them to moulded covers, and a second machine cut, measured, heated and pressed carbon composite to precise temperature and pressure before sealing with filter material. A third machine organised finished product into dispatch trays. Rockwell ControlLogix.
We agree what the system needs to do. I produce a design specification you can review. No ambiguity, no scope creep.
Structured, modular code built to your platform standards - or mine if you don't have them yet. Documentation alongside, not after.
Thorough commissioning and FAT before the system leaves the workshop.
SAT, validation, and clean handover on your site - with complete documentation, operator training, and post-project support.