Leveraging My Experiences to Build Easy to Use Vision Sensors

When I first came to Cognex in 1999 I was worked in our applications engineering group which gave me an in depth understanding and invaluable firsthand experience integrating machine vision systems into automated factory lines. Through discussion and observation I came to have a real appreciation for how our different users viewed our products, integrated them, and what they needed to be successful.

When Cognex decided it wanted to expand into the multibillion dollar sensor market by creating a vision sensor I was asked to manage the development team. One of my roles was to leverage my experiences to help us build a product that was easy enough to use for a factory engineer who made common use of photoelectric sensors but also had the power to overcome many of the limitations of sensors though machine vision. The resulting product was Checker.

A few years ago I took the role of Product Manager for Checker which allows me to focus my energy on product strategy, markets and our customers. And our Marcom department has asked me to start writing this blog so I can share our success stories and tell you about all the great things vision sensors can do.