In certain industries – such as food and beverage or pharmaceuticals – devices within the environment must adhere to demanding standards for regulatory compliance and hygiene due to the risks associated with product contamination and HSE breaches.
The necessary standards of compliance have often negatively impacted the options available to design engineers for creating automation networks that wider industry have been able to adopt.
The additional need to be robust enough to withstand high pressure chemical wash-down has often meant hiding automation equipment away from production lines, within expensive cabinets or behind screens, making them inaccessible to operators.