The industrial camera machine vision industry chain can be divided into upstream, mid-stream, downstream and downstream

Machine vision can perform high-speed online inspection in various harsh environments, and can also work uninterrupted for a long time. Machine vision has more advantages than human eye recognition: it is not afraid of harsh environments, works for a long time, has high precision and high efficiency, thereby saving time, reducing production costs, optimizing the logistics process, shortening machine downtime, improving production efficiency and product quality, reducing the work intensity of testing and inspection personnel, and reducing defective rates. In the process of industrial production, machine vision inspection has greater advantages than human eye recognition.

Machine vision allows machines to have human-like visual functions. It has obvious advantages over human vision in the industrial field and can better realize various detection, measurement, identification and judgment functions. With the continuous improvement of various core technologies, the downstream application fields of industrial vision have also continued to expand. From the beginning, it was mainly used for electronic assembly inspection. It has now developed into various fields of manufacturing and has been widely used in industrial applications such as identification, detection, measurement and robot positioning.

The application of machine vision in industrial vision systems can currently be divided into two categories according to the working environment: one is used on large-scale or high-testing production lines, such as packaging, printing, sorting, etc., or in environments that are not suitable for human work such as in the field and nuclear power plants. Machine vision methods are used to replace traditional manual measurement or inspection, while achieving reliability, accuracy and automation that cannot be achieved under manual conditions. Another type of application is the manufacturing of professional equipment that must use high-performance, precision machine vision components. The typical representative is the semiconductor manufacturing equipment that first led to the rise of the entire machine vision industry. From the classification and cutting of upstream wafer processing and manufacturing, to the end circuit board printing and patching, this type of equipment relies on high-precision visual measurement to guide and position moving parts. For example, if there is a positioning deviation in the solder paste printing process, and the problem is not discovered until online testing after chip placement, the cost of repair will be more than 100 times the original cost.

The machine vision industry chain can be divided into the upstream component-level market, the midstream system integration/complete machine equipment market, and the downstream application market. In the upstream of machine vision, there are software and hardware providers such as light sources, lenses, industrial cameras, image capture cards, and image processing software. In the midstream, there are providers of integration and complete machine equipment. Shenzhen Chuangying Times is a provider of OnePlus professional R&D and production of CCD visual inspection equipment. It is widely used in the downstream of the industry. The main downstream markets are the semiconductor/electronic manufacturing industry, automobiles, printing and packaging, tobacco, agriculture, medicine, and transportation. The system integration market is approximately three times the size of the component-level market.

According to statistics, in 2013, the global market size of machine vision systems and components was US$3.401 billion. In 2014, the global market size of machine vision systems and components was US$3.67 billion. It is expected that in 2018, the global market size of machine vision systems and components will reach US$5.00 billion.

The global machine vision market continued to grow in size in 2014. The machine vision industry is mainly distributed in North America, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, China and other regions and countries. North America accounts for 61.3% of the global machine vision industry, Germany accounts for 3.5% of the global machine vision industry, Japan accounts for 9.5%, China accounts for 8.1%, the United Kingdom accounts for 1.6%, and other regions account for 15.9%.

Domestic machine vision started with the introduction of technology in the 1980s, and the semiconductor and electronics industries were one of the earlier application industries. Before 2006, the application of domestic machine vision products was mainly concentrated in foreign-funded manufacturing enterprises, and the scale was very small. The domestic machine vision market started in 2011. The industry is currently in a period of rapid development and there is a lot of room for development. Specifically, the market capacity of the industry is growing rapidly, the application fields are gradually expanding, and the number of companies engaged in the industry is also increasing rapidly.

From the perspective of market size, my country's machine vision industry entered a development period after 2006 and began to grow rapidly in 2013. The market size reached approximately 8 billion in 2014. With the deepening of automation and intelligence in various industries, the machine vision market will continue to grow in the next five years, and is expected to reach about 20 billion in 2018 (including system integration). From the perspective of industry companies, China has more than 100 international machine vision brands, more than 102 China's own machine vision companies, more than 200 machine vision product agents, and more than 50 professional machine vision system integrators, covering all machine vision industry chain products from light sources, industrial cameras, industrial lenses, image capture cards, and smart cameras.