Power Industry Computer Control System Design and Implementation Problems: A Case Study of Poland

The design and implementation team of computer automation systems for the Polish power industry faced many difficult problems connected with the lack of experience in this domain in the country. Another kind of problems was implied by different levels of information and communication technology in that country and in well developed ones. The differences were generated by both internal (importation limitations) and external (various embargos) reasons. But perhaps the most severe problems were the political ones, implied by the omnipotent communist system, that could spoil and often spoiled even many-year work of design and implementation teams. The paper tries to answer how, in such adverse conditions, it was possible to design and develop very successful power industry computer automation systems.