Cleanrooms are sensitive areas within facilities that require truly sterile environments for their operations and are often even a compliance requirement. Markets such as pharmaceutical compounding, chemical, high-tech manufacturing (such as microchips or hard drive production), and laboratories all have areas designated to have VERY strict humidity, pressure, air velocity and impurity specifications. These rooms are protected by a process in which when one door is opened, all other doors lock, limiting the clean air that escapes and any unclean air or contaminates from entering.

Protecting cleanrooms is vital to the operation of many companies, and LONG has a new solution that eschews the traditional way of ensuring clean room integrity.

Current methods of protecting cleanrooms involve a Process Logic Controller (PLC) that operates the doors in the room in a specific interlocking sequence while an access control system grants access to the areas based on security levels. This can be problematic for many reasons:

• With multiple components involved, it has multiple points of failure
• PLCs typically need to be programmed at the factory which can have long lead times
• Program changes take longer, leading to increased downtime
• Using separate components (PLCs and access control systems) has a higher cost

As opposed to the traditional method, LONG’s solution is more streamlined and effective, using one piece of software to manage everything, from the people to the environment to the flow of the system. Our cleanroom solution handles the door interlocking sequence through only the access control system via a series of virtual relays. Its benefits include:

• Fewer parts so fewer points of failure
• Is field-programmable
• Lessens downtime for program changes
• Software supervision allows client to see interlocking sequence in real time
• Easier to service
• Readily available through LONG

Contact LONG today for more information about this innovative door interlocking solution and ensure your cleanrooms… stay clean.