Ask the Expert!

As our final question in the series, we're asking Mike Drolet... the benefits that you present, only seem concerned about OEMs & Integrators. What’s in decentralization of vision systems for the End Users or Practitioners?

The most obvious benefit to an End User or Practitioner is that they can expect more output from their equipment suppliers. Next, and perhaps more valuable to this contingency, is reduced downtime. Vision and automation systems in general, are evolving so rapidly that maintenance teams might not have much experience troubleshooting them before a fault occurs. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I am not an expert on barcode readers or on how bits & bytes work, but I can identify the color and pattern of a flashing LED to then troubleshoot a fault. Quite often faults take place at the device level of the architecture, so it helps to have a decentralized system where the LEDs are closest to the devices. 

If you are an End User or Practitioner that would like to expect more output from your equipment suppliers and less downtime from your equipment, insist on decentralization!