Thomas Ingendoh, right, is handing over the keys to Image Access to new President Martin Melder
Change is underway at Image Access, a German scanner company that has been a valued IRgA Vendor Member for many years. IRgA Managing Director Ed Avis spoke with company founder Thomas Ingendoh and new President Martin Melder.
Avis: Thomas, in our email exchange about this interview, you called Martin your successor. Does that mean you’re retiring?
Ingendoh: Yes, I am. I’m 67 now. When I turn 68, I won’t be working here anymore. At least not every day. I’ll still be available as a consultant. But I’ll leave the day-to-day business.
Avis: What will you do?
Ingendoh: My wife Debra and I will travel around the world. We also have a residence in Switzerland. In Lago Maggiore. We have a motorboat and an apartment there, in southern Switzerland.
Avis: Martin, what’s your background?
Melder: I trained as a mechanical engineer. I then worked in operations for several years, as a manager or department head within Procter & Gamble , and made Pampers, and that’s actually where I got my first connection to something we’re continuing to develop here, namely machine vision. That means the recognition and processing of images and image data in a continuous manufacturing process.
I then worked at another global electronic components corperation. I was the Operations Director Europe there, with seven factories across Europe. I then moved into a development area and developed laboratory technology, which is important for our job here from a development perspective, because we made a numerous new products. And then I moved into an area that is very similar in certain respects to what we do today, the field of lifting technology. Lifting technology is very similar for several reasons. It has extremely high quality standards. Here at Image Access, we want to take particularly good pictures. And at the company where I was, the standards are so high that if the product is bad, people could potentially die.
Avis: How do you like your new position so far?
Melder: I’ve been at Image Access for two months now, and to be honest, I haven’t regretted this decision for a single day. In fact, I’ve been happy every day because I’ve found something here that Thomas has built up, which is phenomenal. We have a sensationally good, exciting product. We have a sensational, enthusiastic team of people. We have good sales partners who are well positioned to sell, distribute, and service our products, do everything that is needed, including providing good advice to those who use it.
Avis: So the next big step for Image Access is machine vision?
Ingendoh: Right. We have high-quality, fast scanning technology in-house and are now taking the same technology into machine vision. I would say 80% of it is the same technology.
Avis: And the market for machine vision is much larger than for large-format scanning.
Ingendoh: It’s much bigger, and our approach is a little different from that of our competitors. We want to become the one-stop machine vision provider, where customers can get everything they need from us. We already have artificial intelligence integrated. We have integrated the computers, we have integrated the cameras. Our benchmark for our competition is human vision. We want to replace human vision with machine vision. That doesn't mean extremely fast, but extremely intelligent.
Avis: Can you give me an example of where machine vision works?
Ingendoh: One example is the manufacture of plastic sheet material. The complete sheets, the panels, are two by three meters, and surface defects have to be found. Another area is glass inspection, display glass like the one you’re looking at right now. Display glass has imperfections like scratches, tiny air bubbles and discolorings. And a third example where we are now very well positioned is the production of carbon fiber.
Avis: That’s interesting, but IRgA members probably are not going to use this technology. Anything new coming in the area of large-format scanning?
Ingendoh: Yes. At the top end, we have a new book scanner product coming. It will be 36 by 48 inches with real 600 dpi and an intelligent, motorized book cradle..
Avis: This will be for cultural artifacts or something?
Ingendoh: Right. High-quality archives. It has more than five times the pixels per scan of the next best competitor available on the market.
Avis: Anything for more conventional large-format scanning?
Ingendoh: Yes, we are developing a low-cost sheet fed scanner. It uses the same software and operating system as our higher end models.
Avis: What’s your feeling about the large-format scanning market in general?
Ingendoh: I think the market will level out, it will become a replacement market, with older technologies being phased out and newer ones replacing them. We are moving towards a market that is focused on occasional scanning, i.e., ad hoc scanning. These are people who may only need a scanner once a week because their large digitization projects are over. And that’s why we’re doing the project with the low-cost scanner. People will still need scanners, but they won’t necessarily need a top-of-the-line scanner.
Avis: So you envision Image Access focusing on two markets, large-format scanning and machine vision?
Ingendoh: We believe the scanner market and the machine vision area will complement each other. On the market side, they have little to do with each other. But on the technological side, they all come together again. And Martin will take Image Access to the next level.
Melder: I’m a runner, and I compare it to a long-distance run. The founders of Image Access set the initial pace and I have to speed it up. But gladly!
Avis: Thank you both for your time, and congratulations on the exciting future ahead for Image Access.