The limits to growth (slight refrain)

I’m still plodding through my Dec/Jan copy of “Imaging and machine vision Europe,” (I’m a slow reader) and I came upon a piece by Warren Clark where he looks at the prospects for 2008 and beyond. After discussing growth in emerging markets, technical as well as geographic, (security, traffic, Russia, India, China, and so on,) the article wraps up with a quote from Declan O’Dea, who heads Cognex’s UK operations. I think it’s so on the money that I’m going to cut ‘n’ paste it right here.

“The final word goes to Cognex’s O’Dea, who picks up on a key trend at a time when technology has reached a plateau. ‘We believe that a common demand across the entire vision industry will be improved ease-of-use. The challenge for all of us is to create systems that can be used by an unskilled operator, without the need for extensive training or any specialist knowledge. Ideally, this ease of use drive will automate as much of the set-up process as possible so that the operator can set up on a new product with minimal interaction with the system. The food industry is a prime example, characterised by a large product mix and short batch runs on the same production line. Unskilled operators need to be able to reconfigure the vision system quickly and reliably to inspect a new product type.’”

Are you listening, all yea who set the 5 year product development plans? This is what we want!

Lest I be accused of plagiarism, let me say once more that I’m quoting from “Imaging and machine vision Europe” and you can read the whole article (in fact I urge you to do so), by clicking this link.