Networked Excellence

VISION SYSTEMS Four companies in Italy’s Northeast that have developed artificial vision systems in different areas and for different applications, have joined together to give life to VEN - Vision Excellence Network. Objective: more competitiveness and visibility, lower costs, reduced time to market...

Visionlab designs, manufactures and integrates artificial vision systems and special solutions for automation in an industrial environment with a rich history of applicative cases in controls for printing and converting; IT+Robotics, a spin-off of the University of Padua, specializes in vision systems for quality control, robot guidance and programming software; Phoenix-rto, this too a spin-off of CNR-IFN, operating in the photonic and spectroscope field, devises dedicated optical systems in fields ranging from agrifood to biomedical; Tecnogamma designs and makes hi-tech solutions based on laser technology for size and quality controls in hostile environments.
In addition to residing in the Northeast of Italy and operating with complementary skills and approaches in the machine vision systems field, these four companies have in common the idea that by sharing something they can offer their customers much more.

The meaning that they have given to the term "something" and "much more" has led to the creation of Vision Excellence Network, alias VEN: a network of companies, or rather a de facto partnership, which aims on the one hand at increasing the visibility and competitiveness of member companies as well as promoting the advantages of the products offered, and on the other reducing costs and time to market of their specific solutions, making them even more advantageous for the user. But there is more…

An open project
Working at a "high" (hi-tech and quality products) level in the same area is the pre-condition of the creation of VEN, without which there would be no incentive to sit around a table and try and work things out. Once seated, under the aegis of Unint, a consortium for integration between companies, the neo partners soon start to discover the vast potential of an open network.
Federico Zoppas, Presidient of Unint, explains its origins and reasons: «VEN is part of the larger Unint activity, that is an operational tool available to all companies and has the goal to gather the ideas of cooperation and development looking for partners and help lay the basis of encounter».
VEN is, therefore, at the same time, a concrete project and something still in the making: concrete because already existing and operational, with products, services and objectives; in the making because potentially open to access by other operators but also because in time the members will undoubtedly discover new opportunities for working together.
‘gentleman’s’ agreement that can evolve into a real network contract, but at the moment does not present limits and rigidity offers shows many advantages, aboveall at the outset.
The relationship between partners develops freely, depending on the affinity and opportunities, leaving the field open to experiment. Companies that have joined VEN, for example, are already committed to presenting themselves and promoting the benefits among users and the characteristics of the technologies they represent, but have also identified ways of joint purchasing of components and experimented new horizons deriving from the exchange of experience.

In fact, creating a sort of machine vision alliance promotes the sharing of knowledge, offers ideas and technology transfer opportunities to create something new together, enabling time to market to be slashed and more generally boosting the capacity to respond to the needs, even non standard, of the market(…) un consorzio per l’integrazion.
And then, in the future, we'll see ... maybe instead of simply ‘living together’ we might even consider some form of ‘marriage’.   

From a promotional, commercial and procurement point of view ... and in R&D, which lends itself to information and knowhow exchange, technological influences and joint measures experience.
The versatility of a non formalized

VEN: the product portfolio
VEN offers itself as an interlocutor for all companies pursuing objectives of reducing costs and improving the versatility and quality of products and processes. The Vision Excellence Network manufactures systems for non-contact optical and electronic industry that carry out • product quality control • control of surfaces and shapes • color control • robotics and automation • dimensional control • 2D and 3D profilometry • document management.
Many and varied the areas of application including steel, wood processing, mechanical engineering, pharmaceutical, agrifood, flexible packaging and paperboard, printing and graphics, biomedical.