Monday, October 8, 2012

The new vision system is a secret


If you visit the machine vision section of Keyence’s website, (www.keyence.com,) you’ll see they’re talking about the wonderful new CVX series of vision sensors. With features like a “judgment algorithm,” and “color learning,” it sounds pretty slick. The pictures show what looks like a low-end smart camera slash high-end vision sensor that you just point at the objects to be inspected as they shuffle by.

But then disappointment struck. I asked a co-worker to get some more info – download the brochure, find out about pricing and so on – and that’s when trouble struck. Apparently Keyence aren’t ready to share that kind of info.

I understand it takes time to get all the marketing materials together, but surely they can be coordinated? And here’s something I’ve said before but I think it bears repeating: please don’t tell me you’ve got a great new product until you’re actually ready to sell it to me. Just telling me what’s coming soon causes me to, at best, delay a purchase, and at worst, go to one of your competitors.

So please, Keyence and every other vendor in our industry, don’t be coy about your new products. Talk about them openly, have all the info, and be willing to ship, or shut up until you are.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't you think that other users may consider to have information on upcoming products as soon as possible? Product life cycles for some applications can be long and people tend to plan in some companies. So they are happy to see, what they can expect in the next months, without having it in hand...
It's not always black & white, Mr. Grey!

Anonymous said...

Did I miss the follow up to this post? The auto teaching capability looks extremely interesting. I am very interested to hear if this system delivers a step forward like it looks it does.