Detectors & Imaging

VISION 2011 draws record attendance, industry reports strong sales

Nov. 16, 2011

Stuttgart, Germany--From November 8 to 10, VISION 2011 attracted more than 7000 visitors, up from about 6500 last year. The largest trade fair in the machine vision industy included 351 exhibitors, with a marked increase in the number of visitors from Asia.

Since the proportion of visitors from the medical technology industry had increased substantially in 2010, the organizers of the show, Messe Stuttgart, created the Medical Discovery Tour, which attracted 43 exhibitors with special exhibits on this topic. Emphasizing to point, the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) in Vienna won the VISION Award 2011 for its 3D dental scanner.

German machine vision in 2012
During the show, the German VDMA (Engineering Federation) Machine Vision Group reported that sales for 2011 will exceed €1.5 billion, a record. "2011 has been an extremely successful year for the German machine vision industry," said Dr. Olaf Munkelt, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the VDMA Machine Vision Group. "Sales in 2011 will increase by at least 20% over 2010, with a substantial backlog of received orders."

He cautioned that the strong rise in incoming orders in the first six months of 2011 has been decreasing since the middle of the year. This is having a negative effect on the increase in industry sales--although the growth curve is still upwards, it has flattened.

Munkelt added, "If the Euro crisis is resolved and the banking system stabilized, the German machine vision industry can look forward to growth prospects of around 5%, to just under €1.6 billion in 2012. This estimate closely corresponds to the VDMA forecast regarding general machine production. An increase of 14% had been predicted for 2011; the prognosis for 2012 is 4% growth for machine production.

Regarding technology developments in machine vision, Munkelt said there is increasing demand from the automotive industry, semiconductor producers, and robotics for 3D machine vision. In cameras, the trend is toward increasingly smaller designs with high resolution and lower power consumption. Many new applications use the UV or IR spectrum.

Quality inspection in industrial production continues to represent the foundation of the machine vision industry and the automotive industry is still the biggest customer in Germany. In 2010 automobile manufacturers and their component suppliers again accounted for 25% of all machine vision sales. New application areas of machine vision are appearing in practically every sphere. The proportion of so-called non-industrial applications will therefore rise in the medium and long term.

Asia's share in turnover of the German machine vision industry has been increasing for years, reaching 17% in 2010. Machine vision in China alone accounted for 7%. Munkelt added, “We are anticipating longer-term and strong growth potential in Asia, especially in China, where there are signs of growing interest in automation technology. This will further promote the use of machine vision."

SOURCE: Messe Stuttgart

About the Author

Conard Holton | Editor at Large

Conard Holton has 25 years of science and technology editing and writing experience. He was formerly a staff member and consultant for government agencies such as the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and the International Atomic Energy Agency, and engineering companies such as Bechtel. He joined Laser Focus World in 1997 as senior editor, becoming editor in chief of WDM Solutions, which he founded in 1999. In 2003 he joined Vision Systems Design as editor in chief, while continuing as contributing editor at Laser Focus World. Conard became editor in chief of Laser Focus World in August 2011, a role in which he served through August 2018. He then served as Editor at Large for Laser Focus World and Co-Chair of the Lasers & Photonics Marketplace Seminar from August 2018 through January 2022. He received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, with additional studies at the Colorado School of Mines and Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.