I have been tasked with taking multiple machine centers in the plant and relaying the I/O points from each machine center back to a central PLC rack somewhere else in the plant. They are wanting to minimize wires and hardware so I was wondering is there a way that each machine center can be linked to a gateway sending its I/O points back to a centrally located PLC within the plant? They are not wanting any remote racks anywhere. I was told they want the field devices connected directly to the "gateway" individually and the gateway communicating back to the PLC.