ANALYSIS: THE PHOTONICS LEADERS
customer journeys. A lot of our manufacturing is focused on customers that come to us because they have specific needs, that we can help through both parallel efforts in partnering with vendors or, if it’s not possible, working out a customised manufacturing solution.
What sets Edmund Optics manufacturing offering apart from its competitors? One of the nice things about having that strong marketplace brand is that we don’t have to manufacture absolutely everything that customers need. In some cases, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it! One of the biggest advantages of working with us is that we can help supply components and design assembly for the entire beam path. We can work with partners to find a customised special piece, or we work with our own internal manufacturing to help create one. It’s a very powerful proposition.
Are there any complexities about operating as such a scaled global manufacturing business? There are always small hiccups that come with working globally, but equally someone’s always working and someone’s always online! That can be a huge benefit. Across our factories in Europe, Asia and the United States, each has areas of expertise and speciality. It means there’s always someone available to answer those technical questions.
What do you see as being the greatest business development challenges that are faced by Edmund Optics today? It felt that, in 2023, a lot of the industry just took a breath after the COVID-19 pandemic and things slowed down. Then we have economic uncertainty, so – in terms of business development – not all market segments are recovering in parallel. There’s also a lot of geopolitical unrest throughout the world that causes
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uncertainties, and a push of nationalism in terms of some of the buying behaviour. A lot of these external factors are playing a pretty sizable role right now in how the industry is moving in terms of business development. It’s what makes it kind of interesting!
What are the greatest technology development challenges currently being faced by the industry? Being a scientist at heart, I’d see this as a more of a fun problem! If you look at innovation cycles – from that first idea, creating a concept, making a product and then getting it out the door – it is exponentially increasing [in pace]. Look at how long it took for the telephone to be actually in everyone’s house! Now consider the different technologies that have been enabled by optics and photonics, and how fast they’re developing from one year to the next. One of the biggest challenges that our industry faces is keeping up and being able to make sure which ‘horse to back’! Looking at the field of quantum optics, there are a lot of early entrants, and potentially, some will see business cycles that veer into that trough of disillusionment. It’s an exciting time to be in technology development, especially in optics, because no matter which one you’re in, there’s a lot of fun things to be learned.
Another universal challenge that the industry faces is, of course, the skills shortage… It’s a challenge on several different fronts, because skilled technicians need to be working at their facility. A lot of times, this issue tends to need more of a regional focused solution. And before that you need the next generation of students to know that there’s a career to be developed, especially in manufacturing. These are really cool jobs; you can have a career, be very successful and make a good living. There has been a lot of great effort in the US and Europe. I encourage
Jessica DeGroote Nelson, Senior Director of Optical Product Development at Edmund Optics
those in industry that are struggling with the skilled labour shortage to not only support their local ecosystem, but to get involved with clusters, and support the local community colleges.
As a leading photonics organisation, you focus a lot on outreach with projects such as your annual Educational Award, how else does the company do this and why is it so important? Our desire to give back to the community is very important because this is a community that has given so much to us. In order for the industry to grow, we need to continue to get new people involved and it’s going to take the proverbial village in order to make this happen! We encourage all our employees to do so, we put a lot on our websites and we collaborate very frequently with a lot of organisations.
What are the next critical products or technology advancements Edmund Optics is focused on in the next 24 months or beyond? You’re going to be hearing a lot more about metrology
from us. We’ve been working with an industry partner in order to build a custom spectrophotometer specifically for our hard coded filter technologies to allow us to be able to test higher optical density. We will continue to invest in growing our laser testing facilities in-house, so we’re able to do a lot of our own customised testing.
Finally, are there any particular professional goals you are focused on in your current role at Edmund Optics?
I mentioned earlier the rapid pace of the innovation cycle. One of the things that I feel very passionate about is that, in order to make those next innovation cycles happen, it takes collisions of different people, different ideas, different thoughts. I see a big emphasis – not only for myself – on continued partnerships and collaborations. The thing I am looking most forward to in the future are those collisions, because you never know when those great ideas are going to happen! EO
February 2024 Electro Optics 21
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