News Basler acquires Silicon Software B


asler has acquired 100 per cent of the shares of Silicon Soſtware with immediate effect.


Te transaction sees Basler gain Silicon


Soſtware’s image acquisition cards and soſtware technology, including Silicon Soſtware’s VisualApplets FPGA programming environment. Basler said in a statement that next-


generation image sensors, and their associated higher data rates, mean that easy-to-use, high-performance image acquisition cards will become increasingly important in the future. Silicon Soſtware’s two managing directors,


Dr Klaus-Henning Noffz and Dr Ralf Lay, will continue to work for Basler. In September 2017, Silicon Soſtware


celebrated its 20th anniversary. It has more than 50 employees, with sales totalling around €8.6 million last year. It hosted the latest International Vision Standards Meeting in Frankfurt, Germany in May, and Klaus- Henning Noffz is a member of the VDMA Machine Vision board. ‘Silicon Soſtware’s product portfolio


complements ours and will significantly contribute to successfully implementing our planned expansion strategy towards the performance segment of the computer vision market,’ said Dr Dietmar Ley, CEO of Basler. Silicon Soſtware’s Dr Noffz and Dr Lay stated: ‘Te strategic alignment of the two


From left: Dr Klaus-Henning Noffz; Dr Dietmar Ley; and Dr Ralf Lay


companies fits very well together. Basler and Silicon Soſtware can now offer solutions from image acquisition to analysis for all performance areas worldwide. Tey are two strong brands that also stand for innovations in embedded and Industry 4.0.’ Tis year, Basler celebrates its 30th


anniversary. It began as a two-man operation in the technical centre in Lübeck, Germany. In 2017, it shipped 450,000 camera units


and reported sales of €150.2 million. In 2017, the company increased sales by 54 per cent over the previous year; the Asia business generated the largest sales growth of 60 per cent, with China and South Korea contributing most of these sales. Basler has now signed a joint venture agreement with its distributor, Beijing Sanbao Xingye Image Tech, which has been Basler’s distribution partner in China for nearly 20 years.


News from VDMA Machine Vision By Anne Wendel, director


Digitalisation is key for the machinery industry and will shape it to an even greater extent in the future – robotics and vision are at the centre of this. Digitalisation will be one of the main topics for the upcoming VDMA Robotics and Automation Members Assembly in September, where three keynotes will approach the topic from different angles: Christoph Keese, who drove the digitalisation at the publishing house Axel Springer as its executive vice president, will ask whether Europe has got off to a bad start in the 21st century regarding digitalisation; Professor Julian Birkinshaw, deputy


dean at London Business School, will give practical advice on how to build an organisation with the capacity to evolve; while Dr Florian Resatsch, CEO of Viessmann Group, looks at how SMEs can tackle the challenge of digital transformation.


VDMA Startup Machine In 2017, in the year of its 125th anniversary, the VDMA launched the Startup Machine, which intends to bring together start-up and mechanical engineering companies, and support joint projects. The association is committed to identifying and validating start-ups which work on important


6 Imaging and Machine Vision Europe • August/September 2018


future topics, such as augmented reality, machine learning or blockchain, to advance mechanical engineering in Germany – the goal is ‘matchmaking’ for mechanical engineering. ‘Associations are service providers


for their members, and with the help of our industry’s Startup Machine, we want to tap into potential opportunities to map out technological change. Particularly in the fields of digitalisation, Industry 4.0 or the electrification of vehicle drives, start- ups can be enriching in terms of their innovations and their way of working. In turn, we want to open the door to our industry for start-up companies so


that they can find out directly whether their ideas and projects actually suit our market,’ explained Hartmut Rauen, VDMA deputy executive director. The association will participate in this new network of industry and start-ups through activities such as hackathons, matchmaking, skunkwork – work for the sake of radical innovation – or digital innovation journeys.


Dr Eric Maiser, head of VDMA Future Business, and Laura Dorfer, project manager for VDMA Startup Machine, would be happy to answer any questions:


future.vdma.org/en/startups. @imveurope www.imveurope.com


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