INTRODUCTION
A recent survey carried out by the Leatherhead Food Research Association suggests that the food industry has been surprisingly slow to take up many useful technologies that have emerged in recent years (Leatherhead Food RA, 1994). The apparently healthy exterior of many food companies belies the problems inherent
within them, which gives the company accountants power over engineers and process technologists (Goldsmith, 1995). The industry is now only slowly realising that investment in specific technology can result in considerable savings for relatively
small capital investment. However, companies must be judicious in their choice of hardware and software, and thus purchase systems which are suited to their needs and not the profit margins of the process control vendors. Many companies are over-reliant on particular vendors because of their reliance on third parties to maintain, develop and update their control systems. These systems/platforms have, in general, been static in their interaction with other software packages and as a rule do not employ many of the principles of open system architecture. Thus, the International Standards Organisation (ISO) open system interconnection reference model (OSI) for information exchange between systems is rarely adhered to, or at best only partially implemented (Ferrero, 1996).