Better together: Cognex and Moritex building a sharper vision of the future
The right lens is a critical component of a successful machine vision deployment: like an eye and a brain, a lens and a smart camera work together to collect visual information, process it, and make decisions. Cognex’s recent acquisition of Moritex helps us bring those two essential components even closer together and gives our customers easier access to complete, tightly integrated vision solutions.
Cognex and Moritex: long histories of success
Both Cognex and Moritex are long-time leaders in industrial machine vision. Since our founding in 1981 and the launch of the first DataMan in 1982, Cognex has been solving the industry's most challenging vision applications and continually introducing new products and solutions.
Moritex goes back even farther: they've been manufacturing applied optics since 1973, focusing on core technology components including lenses, fiber optics, illumination, and more. Their lenses, available in a wide variety of sizes and specifications, enable high resolution, high-contrast imaging and distortion correction in advanced machine vision applications.
Since we both focus on the machine vision market, it’s no surprise that the two companies have overlapping areas of expertise. We both work closely with automotive, electronics, semiconductor, and other high-tech manufacturers. The two companies have been working with each other for some time, too. As Cognex President and CEO Rob Willet said in the announcement press release, “We have long admired, and sold, Moritex optics components as an important element of what we do.”
In fact, we’ve worked with Moritex for over a decade. In recent years, the pace of that cooperation has increased, with Moritex and Cognex collaborating on new lens designs that support our latest vision systems.
A machine vision of the future
Moritex is Cognex’s largest acquisition ever. Viewed in combination with the 2022 acquisition of SAC and their innovative Trevista computational imaging solution, it demonstrates Cognex’s ongoing commitment to expanding the range of solutions we can provide to customers and making it easy to get a complete vision solution in one place. The combined expertise and leadership of Cognex and Moritex will benefit machine vision buyers now and in the future.
In the short term, customers looking for a complete machine vision solution will have a single supplier to turn to for the highest-quality lenses and smart cameras. Moritex’s breadth of experience across a wide variety of industries lets customers find exactly the right lens for their specific application – and Cognex can provide the vision systems to get the job done.
Over the longer term, Cognex and Moritex teams will continue to work on developing solutions for specialized applications, where specific Moritex optical components can provide a distinct advantage, as well as making sure the two product portfolios work together seamlessly.
As we think about the future, we are thrilled to have Takao Sato, previously the CEO of Moritex, as the new President of Cognex Japan. The move reaffirms Cognex’s commitment to the Japanese market specifically and the broader Asian region more generally, as we look to Sato-san's leadership and commitment to excellence to continue our growth in those areas.
We look forward to a close working relationship with Moritex and an ongoing spirit of innovation.
Senior Manager, Global Content Marketing, Cognex
A technology writer and editor for over two decades, Jeremy specializes in making complex information accessible and understandable. A new Cognoid as of July 2023, he has helped businesses in many industries understand the ROI of technology and service purchases through his work for CarGurus, Fiksu, and BuyerZone. When not digging into machine vision trends and technology, he can be found making music with guitar or his a cappella group, playing D&D and other games with his 12yo twins, or just taking a walk in the woods.
