Vision is once again breaking existing records in 2018 and is continuing to gain international relevance - as the figures for the opening of the 28th world's leading trade fair for machine vision show. This year, 472 exhibitors from 31 countries are presenting themselves in Stuttgart - compared to 440 in 2016. The proportion of foreign exhibitors has also increased by three percentage points to 60 percent. As in the past, the most strongly represented nations are the USA with 44 exhibitors and the People's Republic of China with 35 exhibitors. At over 12,000 m², the area occupied by Vision is also larger than ever. With the L-Bank Forum (Hall 1), the trade fair occupies the largest hall on the Stuttgart exhibition grounds, including the gallery and foyer area.

"We are delighted that we were able to exceed our self-imposed target of 450 exhibitors," says Florian Niethammer, Project Manager of Vision. "This result clearly reflects the positive development of the industry." In addition to the trend towards more internationalization, the high proportion of new exhibitors (25 percent) also reflects the current dynamics in the machine vision industry. "This fits in with our motto this year, Be Visionary," says Niethammer. "An appeal with which we want to encourage both exhibitors and visitors to Vision 2018 to continue to think and act in a bold, visionary and revolutionary way in the future."

Potential through conquering new fields of application

The conceptual sponsor of the trade fair, VDMA Machine Vision, also considers the development of the industry to be a success story and expects stable sales for 2018. "Despite all the challenges, the mood in the industry is good and the growth trend will generally continue. Machine vision is firmly established in production and is constantly conquering new fields of application, even outside the factory environment - in constant use for improved quality, greater reliability and more safety. Embedded vision in combination with deep learning provides further impetus for growth," predicts Dr. Klaus-Henning Noffz, Chairman of VDMA Machine Vision and CEO of Silicon Software. "In the last ten years, turnover in the German machine vision industry has doubled. Between 2013 and 2017, the industry grew by an average of 13 percent per year, last year alone by almost 18 percent."

The industry association sees the future potential of machine vision not only in the global trend towards automation, but also in the conquest of new sales markets and areas of application outside the factory environment. A development is already noticeable here. According to the VDMA, the share of sales generated by the German machine vision industry in non-industrial sectors already amounted to 26% in 2017; sales themselves grew by 16%. Growth drivers include the security and surveillance, intelligent traffic systems, medical diagnostic equipment and surgical technology segments.

Networking helps to open up new markets

The matchmaking initiative "Business Beyond Borders" (BBB), which is cooperating with Vision for the first time this year, is committed to facilitating cross-border networking between companies within the increasingly internationalized industry. The measure, which is funded by the European Commission, primarily supports SMEs and clusters in their search for international business partners and in opening up new markets. "Vision is one of ten trade fairs in strategically relevant industries of the future in Europe and worldwide, during which the BBB programme supports participating companies in their internationalization. Due to the high degree of internationality of the trade fairs in Europe, they are an efficient springboard, especially for SMEs," explains Barbara Weizsäcker, Secretary General of EMECA and the European Exhibition Industry Alliance. Thanks to the matchmaking meetings at the previous BBB events, 687 companies are currently negotiating a partnership agreement or have already signed one.