Repositioning to meet global progress

Due to increasing demands for worldwide vision and imaging editorial coverage, Vision Systems Design will be merged with its sister PennWell publication Image Processing Europe beginning in January 2003. The new magazine will be named Vision Systems Design, will provide 12 issues per year, and will increase circulation to 32,000 North American, European, and Asian readers. It will track the changing international characteristics of the machine-vision and image-processing industry and incorporate many of the editorial sections and layout designs of Image Processing Europe.

This progression to worldwide coverage is based on the international acceptance and success of instant Internet communications. Companies designing, building, and selling machine-vision and image-processing products are now marketing them on their Web sites. They are subsequently being flooded with inquiries from virtually every connected country. As a result, industrial, business, and consumer products and markets are no longer regional; they are now immediately available to buyers around the world. Manufacturers and suppliers of machine-vision and image-processing products are therefore finding themselves transitioning from regional trading to an international business. Indeed, more and more European and Asian companies are opening sales offices in North America, and vice versa.

Companies are using their World Wide Web addresses in all of their published material. Similarly, editorial information in both Vision Systems Design and Image Processing Europe can be found at www.vision-systems.com, which is attracting thousands of visits per month from nearly every country in the world. Readers wanting information can access it instantly with just a button click. As a result, reader-service cards in magazines, with a mailing turnaround time of days or weeks, have become obsolete. Consequently, there is no longer a need to publish two separate magazines that bring virtually the same editorial coverage to regional countries.

To reflect this international concept, the new Vision Systems Design will provide a worldwide perspective of technology, product, and application trends that drive the global vision and imaging market; a completely revised 2003 Editorial Calendar to encompass an international outlook; and a redesigned format for an easier-to-read, more-contemporary-looking magazine. Moreover, its editorial package will be updated to offer imaging and vision solutions for engineers and integrators worldwide.