Do you play the field?

To put it another way, are you monogamous or poly-amorous when it comes to your machine vision? Some of the factories I visit are obsessive about only letting one brand in through their gates, others just don’t care.

I see arguments for both sides. Standardizing on a single brand (camera, light lens … whatever) creates more purchasing leverage, simplifies spares holdings, and means less training coupled with greater opportunity to develop deeper skills.

On the other hand, there’s the risk that you won’t have the best tool for a specific task, and that you’ll be missing out on the latest and greatest innovations. And there’s another problem too. Say you standardize on Dalsa smart cameras running Sherlock, and then your vision specialist leaves. Yes, you hire a replacement, but he or she might only speak Cognex. That means he’ll want to bring in a whole new set of cameras.

So what do you do? Vote in the poll above and let’s find out.