UK VISION
Flying the flag for vision engineering
Denis Bulgin speaks to Mark Williamson and David Hearn, who both started their own vision companies in the UK 20 years ago and are both now at Stemmer Imaging
T
wenty years ago, within a month of each other, Mark Williamson and David Hearn set up Pinnacle Vision and Vortex
Vision respectively. Within four years they had joined forces and continue to work together to the present day within Stemmer Imaging, with Hearn as managing director of Stemmer Imaging Ltd in the UK and Williamson as director of corporate market development at group level. Although they did not officially become part of the Stemmer Imaging group until 2004, Willi Stemmer had contributed in a variety of ways in their early days.
The early years Hearn’s first involvement with vision was working for Data Translation selling PC-based data acquisition and image processing hardware and soſtware. He then became a director at Optimas, introducing Optimas image analysis soſtware to the UK. Setting up Vortex Vision
Mark Williamson
in 1997, his first products were from Imaging Technology and JAI. Williamson came from a vision background at
Data Cell, which had the franchise for Imaging Technology products many years before Hearn. In 1995, Williamson became general manager at Active Imaging, a subsidiary of Data Cell set up to design, manufacture and market network video systems. In 1997, the first products he offered through Pinnacle Vision were from Coreco, Sony and line scan cameras from Basler. Initially Hearn and Williamson saw each other as direct competitors, but when Coreco acquired Imaging Technology in 2000, the two were brought together and began to realise that their businesses were complementary, rather than
David Hearn
overlapping, which led them to form Firstsight Vision in 2001.
The Stemmer influence Hearn first met Willi Stemmer in 1987 when working for Data Translation and Willi’s company – then Stemmer Electronics – was the distributor for Data Translation products in Germany. When Hearn set up Vortex Vision, Willi Stemmer took a stake in the business and the first products that Hearn sold were very similar to those that Willi was selling in Germany, now as Stemmer Imaging. When Vortex Vision and Pinnacle Vision merged in 2001 to form Firstsight Vision, Willi Stemmer still had a financial interest in the new firm. One of the challenges that both Firstsight
Vortex Vision’s premises, which David Hearn set up in 1997 28 Imaging and Machine Vision Europe • December 2017/January 2018
Vision and Stemmer Imaging faced was that of being able to demonstrate all of the products within their portfolios to potential customers and offer rapid delivery, at a time when holding high levels of stock by a company was generally considered to be poor financial practice. Willi Stemmer, however, had other ideas. He was keen to expand into Europe and believed that having a large stockholding would provide a competitive edge, so he invested significantly in stock, much of which could be delivered the following day. In 2004, Firstsight Vision became the first company to join the Stemmer Imaging group, with a company in Switzerland following later the same year. Imasys in France joined
@imveurope
www.imveurope.com
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