CyberOptics: Honing in on the High-Reliability Market with 3D AOI and SPI Platforms

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Langbridge: We focus globally with our general product range, but with this particular product we’re focusing on North America, Europe, Japan and Korea, because they tend to be high value-add areas. China tends to be a follower in production with high-volume and low technology, so we’re primarily focused on North America, Europe, Japan and Korea.  

Matties: How do you service your customers in North America?

Langbridge: In North America, we are direct. We have manufacturer’s representatives from a sales finder’s point of view but we support customers directly from a service and applications point of view.

Matties: What does your typical customer look like?

Langbridge: For this product, our customers are automotive, military, medical, and anything high-reliability.

Matties: Looking at the automotive industry, is that where you would anticipate the largest growth?

Langbridge: Definitely, the largest growth is in automotive. For this product, and we only just launched the product at APEX this year, our early adopter customers are high-reliability telecoms, medical and automotive.

Matties: It sounds like you are in tune with what is going on in the marketplace. How long have you been with the company?

Langbridge: I’ve been with the company 15 years; I’m a long-term servant.

Matties: Are you surprised you’ve been there for 15 years?

Langbridge: I’m not surprised, because it’s a great company and if you look at the majority of the key employees in our company they are all 15- to 20-year veterans. It’s a nice place to be, with good technology, good people, and no politics.

Matties: What sort of service contract do you offer?

Langbridge: Well, they won’t have to buy one for three years because we have a three-year warranty on our products. We are that confident in the hardware technology. Regarding software upgrades, our policy is that reliability updates are always free. We want our customers to always be on the latest release so we can support them more effectively. For upgrades, if there’s a value proposition or some hardware associated with it, there may be a cost there.

Matties: Are your machines plugged into the internet so you have complete access?

Langbridge: Yes, they are. We do a lot of remote control and a lot of remote training for our customers. They tend to appreciate that it’s much faster; rather than waiting several hours or a day for an engineer, it can be immediate. 

Matties: Are you collecting data on their process so you can give them feedback?

Langbridge: We tend not to collect any production data that can be sensitive unless the customer wishes us to do so. We use the remote control to just look at the application and offer some support or application help.

Matties: Where do you build your equipment??

Langbridge: All the sensing technology is developed in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and our equipment is manufactured in Singapore. Our delivery time is pretty fast, because we build to a production forecast.

Matties: How many designers do you have for a circuit design and R&D?

Langbridge: I think in R&D the count is around about 60, maybe 70 in total, and that’s evenly split between the U.S. and Singapore; it’s also evenly split between software and hardware. When I say hardware, it is mainly sensing development. Most of the simple, mechanical electric and sub-assemblies is contracted out, so we focus on the high-end development sensing software.

Matties: Great, it sounds like you are at the right spot at the right time.

Langbridge: We think so. It’s an exciting time. We have done a lot of innovative development in the last four or five years, and I believe our latest development puts us right in the sweet spot of the market and we’re ready to grow again. 

Matties: Sean, thanks for your time today and I wish you the best of luck going forward.

Langbridge: Thank you, Barry.

Sean Langbridge is the global sales director for CyberOptics.

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