Press Release

16.06.08Allied Vision Technologies Opens New Production Facility in Stadtroda, Germany

On June 6, 2008, Allied Vision Technologies, a leading camera manufacturer, christened its new production facility at the company’s main headquarters in Stadtroda. Production capacity has been doubled, in order to keep pace with market demand.

Allied Vision Technologies christened its new production facility at the company’s main headquarters in Stadtroda on June 6, 2008. The company began extensive construction work in April 2007 to expand its production and storage capacity.  The new production facility went into operation at the beginning of 2008, and the second phase of construction to add new office space has just been completed.

Twice the Capacity and Modernized Processes
Over 1,000 square meters of space was added to the plant to expand its capacity for camera production, quality assurance and inventory.  The company also modernized its production process and logistics, creating an all-new, fully automated, state-of-the-art PCB assembly system and two new automated, high-rise storerooms to streamline logistics for components, modules and finished cameras.

The company also expanded its human resources and know-how at the Stadtroda site by hiring five new employees in its Manufacturing, Purchasing and Quality Assurance divisions.

High Quality and High Flexibility
Production capacity was not expanded at the cost of manufacturing quality or flexibility, which have contributed to the past success of Allied Vision Technologies. “Customer service comes first with us, so we have to keep our production flexible” explained Frank Grube, CEO of Allied Vision Technologies GmbH. “Our processes are designed so that we can react quickly to our customers’ needs and our delivery time can be kept short.”  The company is protecting itself and its customers from delays in the delivery of sensor chips, which are in high demand on the world market, by keeping a large supply of all of the sensors in all of the resolutions that are built into AVT’s camera models, so they are always on hand in the warehouse. “Such a relatively high inventory of strategic components naturally represents a substantial cost factor for us.  But this investment makes AVT a partner valued by our customers all over the world,” said Mr. Grube.

Another factor in production flexibility is employee qualifications. ”None of our employees is specialized in a certain module or camera family.  Each one has the know-how to to run through all stages of production with all types of cameras.  That way, we always make optimum use of our employees,” explained Mr. Grube.

New Products, New Markets
Investing in new production capacity had become necessary because of AVT’s rapid growth on the world market for industrial and scientific image processing.  The company’s 2007 sales rose more than 13% to over 24 million euros, and the company hit the one-hundred employee mark in March 2008.

”With our new production facility, we are now best equipped for our further expansion,” commented Mr. Grube. “We want to keep growing by opening up new markets and expanding our product portfolio.” Allied Vision Technologies wants to keep expanding business at its US affiliate, AVT Inc. and open a subsidiary in Asia.  New market segments should bring more new sales.  Besides traditional industrial automation, new fields like medical technology, traffic, safety and even sports and entertainment have a high potential for growth. 

But, according to Grube, the key to success remains an attractive, innovative product portfolio: “With the introduction of the new Stingray to the market, we have expanded our lineup to include a sixth camera family. In the future, we will also offer other digital interfaces besides the successful FireWire Interface in order to meet the needs of our customers even better.”
The new production facility in Stadtroda should now make this growth strategy possible.