IDEM Safety Switches Ltd
The IDEM product portfolio includes the world’s largest range of stainless steel safety switches
Four royal awards, one mission: to protect lives through machine safety IDEM Safety Switches Ltd has achieved the extraordinary distinction of winning its fourth royal award, with the company’s latest King’s Award for Enterprise: Innovation recognising its pioneering range of dual anti-tamper RFID locking safety switches. This latest award marks another major milestone for the Wigan-based manufacturer, whose products are designed and manufactured in the UK to protect people working with industrial machinery around the world. Having previously been recognised with The Queen’s Award for Enterprise: International Trade and successive King’s Awards for Enterprise: Innovation, IDEM’s fourth award further reinforces the company’s position as one of the world’s leading innovators in machine safety technology. A clear challenge The winning innovation addresses one of the most serious challenges in industrial safety: the deliberate overriding or defeating of safety switches fitted to machine guards, gates and access doors. Safety switches are installed to prevent injury by ensuring that hazardous machinery stops when a guard is opened. Strict health and safety regulations in the UK and across most industrialised countries require these devices to be fitted to machinery and interfaced with machine control systems. Yet in real-world production environments, some operators may still attempt to bypass them, often because opening and closing a machine door can be perceived as slowing down productivity. For IDEM, this challenge has always been clear. A safety switch must do more than meet standards; it must be robust, reliable, long-lasting and highly resistant to manipulation. The company’s award-winning, patented dual anti-tamper RFID
locking switches have been developed precisely for this purpose, combining advanced electronic recognition with strong mechanical protection against forced entry. The result is a generation of locking safety switches that help prevent unauthorised access to dangerous machinery while also making it significantly harder for operators to defeat the safety function. By incorporating RFID technology, the switch can ONLY work with its intended actuator, reducing the possibility of bypassing the system using a spare or substitute actuator. At the same time, the dual anti-tamper design provides additional physical security, strengthening protection against forced entry and manipulation. This combination of intelligent RFID coding and mechanical anti-tamper engineering is what makes the innovation so important. Industrial environments are demanding places. Safety switches must withstand vibration, impact, repeated use, misalignment, contamination and harsh cleaning regimes. In some cases, they must also withstand deliberate misuse. IDEM’s winning design recognises these realities and provides a practical, highly engineered solution for machine builders and end users who need both safety and productivity. Royal accolades IDEM Safety Switches Ltd has received four royal awards: • The Queen’s Award for Enterprise 2022: International Trade • The King’s Award for Enterprise 2023: Innovation – Guard Locking Solenoid Safety switch • The King’s Award for Enterprise 2024: Innovation – Ultra-Reliable Grabwire Safety Switch • The King’s Award for Enterprise 2026: Innovation – Dual anti-tamper RFID locking safety switches
Winning a fourth Royal Award is a remarkable achievement and a powerful endorsement of
The MLZ is a compact 30mm-wide hygienic safety locking switch housed in mirror polished 316 stainless steel
www. kingsawardsmagazine .com
98
Made with FlippingBook Ebook Creator