North American Machine Vision Market Grows 4% in 2003, Reversing 2002 Declines

Forecasts Call for Nearly 9% Annual Growth Through 2008

Ann Arbor, MI – The North American machine vision market grew four percent in revenue in 2003, reversing course from a decline of 15% in 2002, according to the latest machine vision market study from the Automated Imaging Association (AIA), the industry’s trade group. 

Unit growth posted a substantial gain of 27%, as users embraced lower cost smart cameras, vision sensors and embedded vision processors.

The total North American market was $1.6 billion in 2003, the study reports.  The world machine vision market is estimated at $6.6 billion, a gain of nearly 14% from 2002, fueled by increased use of machine vision in the Pacific Rim, especially Japan and China.

‘‘Our new study provides further evidence that the downturn in capital equipment spending on machine vision ended in 2003,’‘ said Jeffrey A. Burnstein, Executive Director of AIA.  ‘‘More than 80% of the machine vision companies participating in our study expect their sales to post further gains in 2004.

‘‘Machine vision is used for a wide-variety of manufacturing tasks including inspecting computers, checking to see that there are no contaminants in a pharmaceutical vial and that the correct label is on the vial, making sure there's no glass in baby food jars, helping guide robots to install car windshields, packaging cookies -- the list is nearly endless,’‘ explained Burnstein.

Industries that showed strong increases in the use of vision in 2003 included pharmaceutical, medical device, automotive and wood products. Some industries didn’t fare as well, particularly electronics and semiconductor.

‘‘While individual end markets rise and fall, the overall trend is quite positive for machine vision, as manufacturing companies emphasize the need to provide better quality products at a lower price as well as product traceability in keeping with heightened sensitivity to security.  Machine vision technology also can help companies become more productive, allowing them to keep more manufacturing jobs onshore rather than outsourcing them to lower cost producing nations such as China,’‘ Burnstein asserted.

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The Machine Vision Market:  2003 Results and Forecasts to 2008 can be purchased from AIA for $995 (member companies pay $595).  The study, which contains more than 300 pages of data on the global machine vision market, was primarily written and researched by Nello Zuech, President, Vision Systems International, one of the industry’s leading consultants for more than two decades.

Founded in 1984, AIA is celebrating its 20th anniversary as the world’s largest machine vision trade association.  Its 200+ member companies from 23 nations include leading machine vision system and component suppliers, system integrators, OEMs, end users, consulting firms and research groups.

In addition to the annual market study, AIA is best-known for Machine Vision Online (www.machinevisiononline.org), the world’s leading machine vision resource on the Internet; The Vision Show and Conference and the International Robots & Vision Show, North America’s leading machine vision events; the annual AIA Business Conference, the industry’s premier networking event; and its standards development work in camera connectivity, especially Camera Link ® and Gigabit Ethernet.

To order the new study or to obtain more information on AIA and its activities, visit www.machinevisiononline.org or contact AIA Headquarters at 734/994-6088.