The UK Industrial Vision Association, a Special Interest Group of the PPMA (Processing and Packaging Machinery Association), has revised its membership categories to better reflect the changing face of the industrial vision industry in the UK.
The new categories are: ‘vision technology providers’, ‘vision systems integrators and consultants’, and ‘providers of solutions that utilise machine vision’. The ‘academic’ membership continues as before. There is also a new membership document available that highlights benefits of membership of the association.
UKIVA chairman, Mark Williamson, explained that the new categories would help existing members, potential new members and vision customers alike. ‘There are plenty of end-user and OEM customers who want to be able to buy anything from individual components such as cameras or light sources to complete vision systems,’ he said. ‘For these customers it is clear that that the “vision technology providers” are the people to contact.
‘However, there is an emerging number of companies who specialise in working with manufacturers to integrate vision systems into a new or existing production line,’ he continued. ‘We want to encourage more of these integrators and consultants to join the UKIVA so we have created the new “vision systems integrators and consultants” category which will enable them to be found by prospective customers more easily.
‘The association recognises that although they offer a highly skilled service, many of them are comparatively small companies. We are therefore offering a 50 per cent reduction on the membership fee to integrators or consultants with a turnover of less than £200K pa as an added incentive to join. The committee also has the flexibility to consider turnovers up to £500K pa on a case-by-case basis. This makes it extremely attractive for individual consultants and small integrators to take advantage of the benefits offered by the association.’
The final new category of ‘providers of solutions that utilise machine vision’ provides an additional visibility in the vision market for companies whose products make use of vision as part of their functionality. ‘We have, of course, retained our “academic” membership category,’ concluded Williamson. ‘This allows any academic organisation to have membership of the association at no charge to continue the interaction between the academic and commercial interests of the vision industry.’
