Plant floor certification program guarantees operation computers in harsh environments
The PlantFloorCertified (PFC) program, introduced by MODULAR of Chattanooga, Tennessee, allows IT and plant management to select standard computing solutions for their plant floor needs—irrespective of any harsh-environment operating concerns. IT and plant managers may choose from virtually any commercially available off-the-shelf brand or model of computer, printer, monitor, or display—without any concern for how operation of the products might be adversely affected by the often-harsh NEMA 4X/IP65 & other environments typical of plant floors. Additionally, for many companies, PlantFloorCertified solutions are the perfect answer to the problem of how to deploy a corporate-mandated office computing system onto the plant floor.
Specialized “Industrial Computers” have long been available for the food/beverage/meat/pharmaceutical plant floor. For most plants, however, the suitability of such specialized systems has been limited due to several factors, including: (1) long development lead times; (2) high initial costs; (3) the difficulties/ uncertainties of inserting “proprietary” boards and CPUs into an otherwise–identical, standard corporate network; (4) increased costs and longer downtimes—since product service/upgrades can only be performed by the manufacturer; and (5) the food plants’ IT HELP desks are unable to troubleshoot/solve problems with the proprietary systems. The PlantFloorCertified (PFC) program eliminates each of those five shortcomings.