We’re delighted to spotlight Peter Jelf, founder and CEO of Visicon, as our August Manufacturing Champion. Peter’s known for his “no BS” approach to machine vision. Speaking with our editor, Peter reveals how he fell into this niche field and why it’s prone to overcomplication.
The field of machine vision was in its infancy when Peter began to specialise in it. “I wasn’t quite there for the birth of machine vision, but I was there when it went mainstream,” he recalls. While machine vision hadn’t been covered during Peter’s multi-skilled apprenticeship with Ford Motor Co., he gained experience of it in the pharmaceutical industry at a contract packer. He’d started as an electrical engineer before becoming a project engineer. It was then that he became responsible for projects involving machine vision, including pharmacode reading and blister inspection, which provided his first real exposure to the field.
At just 23, Peter set up a consultancy firm after taking voluntary redundancy when the contract packer closed the facility. At first, he offered whatever service he could – project engineering, CAD drawing, controls engineering – but through a contact at Omron, he was given the opportunity to use its new vision system, which people were struggling to implement.
At the time, he had no choice but to learn by doing. “It was a steep learning curve,” he admits, as few others were working in that space. But it allowed him establish a niche in machine vision as it transitioned from the laboratory into industrial automation. Visicon was born and has since become a trusted voice in machine vision. Indeed, Peter is known as the “no BS machine vision expert”, a moniker that came from customer feedback.
“I think the problem with machine vision is that the industry is populated by nerds,” he says, and he counts himself among them, but the difference is that, having done his time on production lines as an engineer, he can explain it in more practical terms. Whereas those with a computer science background and no practical experience tend to overcomplicate things. And there are, of course, those who benefit from keeping it as a “black art” when illumination, both figuratively and literally, is crucial. As he puts it, “If you break it down, cameras do nothing more than capture light. So, once you understand that, and you understand how light behaves, then it makes it all a lot simpler.”
The most important piece of advice Peter has for organisations considering a machine vision solution is talk to someone about it. People working in machine vision are knowledgeable and happy to share that knowledge, he says. Most machine vision projects are achievable; it is really a matter of how to approach it. “So, save yourself the headspace and just talk to someone.”
As with all automation projects, there’s a benefit to taking “baby steps” with machine vision implementation over rushing into a huge site-wide transformation project. “Get the quick win in first, get people on board, see the return on investment, and then take the next step. You don’t have to do it all in one go.”
For further practical, no-nonsense advice on machine vision, visit Visicon’s website or follow Peter on LinkedIn, where he posts regular video content.
