Cognex Announces New Code-Reading Capability for the Pharmaceutical Industry

June 3, 2003--Cognex Corporation (NASDAQ - CGNX), the world's leading supplier of machine vision systems and sensors, today announced that the company's award winning In-Sight® vision sensors now have the ability to read Composite Symbology (CS) in addition to Reduced Space Symbology (RSS) codes on pharmaceutical packages for the purpose of product identification and traceability.

Recently proposed regulations will require bar coding on all unit dose medications and increased reporting of safety problems involving medicines. In addition to reducing the high rate of medical errors from the point drugs are manufactured through the point they are administered to the patient, the machine-readable RSS and CS codes promise improved administration efficiencies and rapid detection of potential errors.

‘‘As the U.S. Food and Drug Administration continues its focus on enhancing medication safety through the application of bar coding, Cognex continues to develop the technology our customers will need,’‘ says Justin Testa, Senior VP of Marketing for Cognex. ‘‘By enhancing our RSS support with CS code-reading capability, In-Sight is ready for the next generation of pharmaceutical packaging equipment and robotic drug distribution systems, as well as medication dispensing cabinets and automated storage and retrieval systems.’‘

In-Sight vision sensors are high-performance, on-line inspection devices used in a variety of pharmaceutical applications, including optical character verification, 2D code reading, blister pack inspection, as well as label and tamper-evident safety seal inspection. Each sensor provides field-proven Cognex vision software tools, a vision spreadsheet interface for fast, easy application set-up, and built-in Ethernet communications.

RSS linear bar codes contain the National Drug Code product identification in a space-efficient format for marking ‘‘unit-of-use’‘ products such as individual medicine doses and blister-packed tablets that are too small to be marked with UPC or standard codes. Combining RSS with CS codes provides additional ‘‘machine-readable’‘ information such as lot and date codes, batch number, and expiration date.

Cognex Corporation designs, develops, manufactures, and markets machine vision systems, or computers that can ‘‘see.’‘ Cognex is the world's leader in the machine vision industry, having shipped more than 175,000 vision systems, representing over $1.3 billion in cumulative revenue, since the company's founding in 1981. Cognex's Modular Vision Systems Division, headquartered in Natick, Massachusetts, specializes in machine vision systems which are used for automating the manufacture of a wide range of discrete items and for assuring their quality. Cognex's Surface Inspection Systems Division, headquartered in Alameda, California, specializes in machine vision systems which are used for inspecting the surfaces of products manufactured in a continuous fashion, such as metals, paper, plastics, and nonwovens. In addition to its corporate headquarters in Natick, Massachusetts, Cognex also has regional offices located throughout North America, Japan, Europe, and Southeast Asia. Visit Cognex on-line at http://www.cognex.com.

CONTACT:
Cognex Public Relations Specialist John Lewis
508/650-3140