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Cognex to supply industrial machine vision systems to DoD

ControlDesign.com
07/07/2005

COGNEX HAS entered into an agreement with Lockheed Martin to supply machine-vision systems and industrial identification solutions to help U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) contractors meet new government requirements for unique identification of parts.

"This agreement enables Cognex and Lockheed Martin to approach customers with a simple-to-adopt solution for meeting DoD compliancy requirements," said Justin Testa, senior vice president of ID products for Cognex. "As a result, customers can get state-of-the-art technology and avoid the cost of reinventing the process internally."
 
The Department of Defense Unique Identification (UID) Compliancy Initiative requires that every piece of equipment purchased by the DoD with a value greater than $5000, or that requires serialization, be marked with a 2-D matrix code that distinguishes each item from all others. Cognex provides ID readers designed to read and verify 2-D Data Matrix codes on a variety of surfaces. Lockheed Martin supplies a flexible and easy-to-install software application that manages UID-related data, creates a process audit trail, and ensures that the supplier's process meets DoD policy requirements. 
 
"UID compliancy requirements represent a big change for DoD suppliers, and this agreement can make those changes easier for suppliers and accelerate the success of the UID program," said Richard Erickson, program manager for I-GUIDES at Lockheed Martin Maritime System & Sensors' Tactical Systems line of business.

"This agreement gives us a key relationship with a world leader in machine vision systems, vision sensors, and ID readers. It also gives us access to vision technology that will keep us on the cutting edge of developments in Data Matrix technology as it relates to UID compliancy."