STUTTGART, GERMANY - Vision 2008 maintained its high standards in terms of both visitor numbers and knowledge/expertise - as well as the level of interest in exhibitor products and systems. This was the message from the 292 exhibitors after three very successful days of the trade fair. Registering 6,266 trade visitors, last year’s figure of 6,142 visitors was once again surpassed.

A particularly satisfying development was the proportion of visitors (86%) attending the trade fair with specific intentions to invest or buy (84% in the previous year). Over 90 per cent of these intend to invest over the new 12 months. Almost a quarter of all visitors with investment objectives intend to invest more than EUR 50,000. 53% plan to make new investments, 49% follow-up investments and 14% replacement investments (with some of those questioned in more than one category). Two unexpectedly positive results were the high number of investment intentions, which showed no signs of diminishing, and the continued high level of demand - in spite of overall uncertainty arising from the economic downturn. “Our members are delighted with the positive feedback they have received and are more than satisfied with the knowledge and interest of visitors,” says Dr. Dietmar Ley, Chairman of VDMA Industrial Machine Vision.

Almost every second visitor (45%) made a journey of more than 300 kilometres to attend the trade fair. The proportion of visitors travelling from abroad was 28%. Visitors came from a total of 47 countries, primarily from Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Netherlands, Belgium, France - but also from Japan, USA, India, Israel and Brazil. Fifty-eigtht percent of visitors expressed a particular interest in machine vision systems, 54% in machine vision components, 36% in machine vision applications and 14% were interested in machine vision services (with some of those questioned in more than one category). The focus of the trade fair remained clearly on industrial machine vision (65%), comfortably ahead of non-industrial machine vision. Twenty-four percent of visitors were interested in both areas. This result is not surprising considering the sectors of industry visitors came from.

In addition to the machine vision sector (35%), which covered the waterfront of new products at VISION 2008, visitors also came from electronics/electrical engineering (23%), mechanical engineering (18%), precision engineering and optics (17%), the automotive and supply industries (11% each) as well as other sectors. Almost every second visitor (43%) worked in development, and virtually every third was involved in research (29%). Seventy-six percent of trade visitors questioned said that they played a decisive or significant role within their organisations with regard to purchasing and acquisition decisions.