Award Recipients

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 IDEM’s continued commitment to innovation, UK manufacturing and workplace safety. The latest King’s Award for Enterprise: Innovation recognises not only a product, but a philosophy: safety devices should be designed for the real world, where failure is not an option and where every detail matters. IDEM’s dual anti-tamper RFID locking switches represent that philosophy in action – robust, intelligent and built to protect people every day,

In conversation with Medi Mohtasham, Founder and CEO of IDEM Safety Switches…

What does winning a fourth King’s Award for Enterprise mean to IDEM?
Medi Mohtasham: Winning a fourth royal award is a tremendous honour and a proud moment for everyone at IDEM. These awards recognise the creativity, skill and dedication of our whole team, from design and engineering through to production, testing and customer support. To be recognised again for Innovation shows that continuous improvement is deeply embedded in the culture of the company.

For us, innovation must always have a clear purpose. In machine safety, that purpose is to protect people working with industrial machinery. This latest award is especially meaningful because it recognises a product designed to address one of the most serious challenges in our industry: preventing tampering, manipulation and forced entry.

Why is tamper resistance so important?
Medi Mohtasham: Safety switches are fitted to machinery to ensure that when a guard, gate or access door is opened, hazardous movement is stopped. However, in real production environments, some operators may feel pressure to keep machines running and may try to override safety devices.

That is why safety switches must be robust, reliable and difficult to defeat. A product must not only perform in ideal conditions; it must work in the real world, where it may face vibration, impact, misalignment, contamination, washdown and sometimes deliberate misuse.

What makes IDEM’s dual anti-tamper RFID locking switch different?
Medi Mohtasham: The strength of the innovation lies in combining intelligent electronic protection with strong mechanical security. RFID technology enables the switch to recognise its correct actuator, helping prevent simple bypass methods using spare or substitute actuators.

The dual anti-tamper design provides additional physical protection against forced entry and manipulation. Together, these features give machine builders and end users greater confidence that the safety function cannot easily be defeated.

How does IDEM approach reliability?
Medi Mohtasham: Reliability is at the heart of everything we do. IDEM switches are designed for longevity, not obsolescence, and our testing regimes run for millions of operating cycles. In machine safety, failure is not an option. If a device ever does fail, it must fail-safe by removing power and placing the machine into a safe condition.

What’s next for IDEM?
Medi Mohtasham: We will continue investing in UK design, manufacturing and testing, and we will keep developing products that meet the changing needs of modern industry. Machinery is becoming more automated, connected and complex, so safety technology must continue to evolve. Our mission remains the same: to design and manufacture world-class safety switches that protect people and help industry operate safely and productively.