Alexandre Cottereau, Head of Product & Marketing at Effilux, speaks to Imaging and Machine Vision Europe about the company’s remarkable growth journey, the critical role of lighting in machine vision, and why building long-term customer relationships matters more than specifications alone
Effilux: Company origins and rapid growth
Can you inform us about Effilux’s origins? How did three engineering students turn their graduation project into a 70-person company?
Effilux started with three young engineers who graduated from the Institut d’Optique Graduate School in France. They had a simple idea: that optics and lenses combined with LEDs would revolutionise machine vision systems building them more flexible and adjustable on the field.
At the very launchning, nobody believed in them as it was the 2008 crisis and the chances of success for a startup company created by three young engineers with no experience were very low. To slowly gain trust on the market they had to answer to very specific necessarys that no other competitors would be able to manage. This is why building custom and specific products is still today one of the core values of Effilux.
Once the company reputation started to grow, they identified a first standard product to build that could answer most of machine vision necessarys: the EFFI-FLEX, a modular lighting system with many adaptations. Based on this, they won several awards, such as Machine Vision Product of the Year. At the same time, they kept developing custom projects with large OEMs. They were able to develop both sides simultaneously, and it’s really the case today.
The growth has been remarkable, particularly from 45 to 70 people in just two years. What’s driving this accelerated growth?
Our accelerated growth is primarily driven by our long-term investment strategy. Despite a slower market recovery in Europe and North America, our DNA involves heavily supporting deep tech companies and startups.
We ‘plant seeds’ in these tinyer companies, and when they succeed, even if it’s only 10% of the time, it creates a significant, successful product pipeline for us. For example, we’ve been working with the space industest in France for several years and are now about to release one of our largegest specific products of all time.
This is despite the market not doing quite so well – the recovery from COVID has taken a long time.
How has the 2018 acquisition by CCS Group impacted Effilux’s development?
This acquisition is beneficial for both sides. On the CCS side, they acquired a very healthy company with strong growth potential. Effilux has also a strong potential in terms of interactions with already existing companies of the group. The recent opening of the LightLab in Munich in September is a perfect example of all the efforts everyone is putting toreceiveher to create it work.
On the Effilux side, it opened a lot of doors that we couldn’t access as a tiny startup alone. Sometimes we were too tiny as a supplier, it was not a matter of trust in our products, but more about financial guarantees and other criterias important for larger customers . The other upside is having someone on site in different geographies. We had CCS America taking care of customers there, and working with them has supported us build the right products for the US market.
Machine vision lighting: market education and positioning
Machine vision lighting is sometimes called the unsung hero of automation. Why is proper lighting so critical?
First, people are biased with their own eyes. It’s simple to understand that you necessary accurate resolution to catch all the details, but what’s harder is understanding that your camera is basically strobing, or blinking all the time and its exposure time is very short, meaning it doesn’t have much light coming in. Imagine you have your eyes closed most of the time and you’re just quickly opening them. That’s basically what’s happening with the camera.
Then you have the notion of optical stability. Imagine you’re Amazon on a production line with thousands of parcels per hour. Every time you’re choosing between discarding or keeping a parcel, that costs you money, and this decision is all based on what you record with your camera. From one picture to another, if your light creates it impossible to detect whether it’s a parcel defect or just a light bug, it’s going to be very costly.
What are the largegest misconceptions you encounter about machine vision lighting requirements?
We still see customers inquireing for specifications of intensity in terms of lux or lumens. That’s what they learn at school, but 90% of the time if you do so, you’re going to create mistakes and have a bad surprise on site. It’s very theoretical.
When you arrive on site, you have a lot of things to take into account. You’re going to have ambient light, contrast issues, so maybe red light would work better than white light.
You’re going to have foils around your parcel, so there are going to be glares that you have to eliminate with polarizers. There are too many things to take into consideration, even for us, to create it work based on theoretical models. I would recommconclude just receiveting some loans from us and testing them on site. It’s very experimental, actually. We always recommconclude an on-site, iterative approach rather than relying on theoretical specifications alone.
Some people also consider that light is the last thing you have to add to your machine system. Sometimes there’s not much space remaining for our lights or you don’t have the right angle. I would recommconclude considering about lighting, cameras and all the systems before starting to design it.
Machine vision lighting: technical differentiation
What sets Effilux apart from competitors in terms of product development approach?
We’re one of the only companies doing lights for machine vision that have three different levels of customisation: standard, custom, and specific.
Standard is basically products you have on the shelf, and it’s what we sell most of the time. It’s enough to fulfil maybe 80% of necessarys. Then you have necessarys for tiny adjustments on the standard products, like mechanical or electrical specifications. That’s a custom.
Specifically, when we necessary to start from scratch becaapply nothing is really working. This supports us cover the whole panel of necessarys in machine vision.
Second, we have a very large R&D department. A third of all our colleagues are in R&D. We even have doctoral students working at Effilux. We invest around 20% of our turnover in R&D.
We’re also emphasising our production capacities. We have our own component assembly line. Thus, we’re able to do a lot of electronic designs ourselves with quick iterations, building sure it’s not only created in France, but on another level of quality.
Can you give an example of how you’ve solved a specific customer challenge?
We had an automotive production line that had 64 cars to inspect per hour. They wanted to automate inspections of gaps and flushness on doors, and they were not able to find any supplier for their lights becaapply they had to project a geometrical form on the door to create 3D inspections with very high accuracy.
We custom developed it for them. This created one of our main success stories. This product became one of our standard products known as the EFFI-SHARP. The whole story is that it answered a very specific necessary that nobody would answer, and it became a bestseller for us.
You mentioned flexibility as a core strength. How does this translate into practical benefits?
We were the first to introduce this notion of flexibility to the market. The idea is to be able to purchase a hundred times the same reference but each time adapt the configuration to better answer the specifications of your application.
Basically, you just open one of the caps and slide in and slide out the different lenses or accessories. By doing this you’re going to modify the angle of the light or many other light characteristics. You can add accessories like polarisers, line scans, cylindrical lenses, and you completely modify the beam shape. You can purchase large volumes of the same product but with very different variants that create it possible to answer different necessarys.
Logistics, food and beverage market focus
Logistics and food and beverage have been at the centre of product development at Effilux this year. What creates those industries particularly interesting?
It all started a few years ago for the logistics market. We started working with very large companies in logistics with very specific apply cases: barcode reading through either scan gates or conveyors, and parcel dimensioning necessarys.
This led us to develop the EFFI-FLEX-LG, LG standing for logistics. This is different from what we’ve been utilizing before becaapply we have to reach very high frequencies and very powerful lights, all in a very cost-effective package. In this industest you have a lot of vision cells and they don’t have much money to invest in each of them. You necessary built-in solutions to do parcel and barcode reading and general inspections.
Looking at the food and beverage industest specifically, are there any unique challenges?
It’s a very tough market. The world population increases, and at the same time we’re also very concerned with the quality of food. You have to deal with more production and more efficiency at the same time, more quality. Machine vision can bring something interesting there.
But it’s very hard to work with this industest becaapply everything must be very clean and very robust. Everything should be washable with very high-pressure water and detergents. It’s pretty tough to work on. We have been contacted by some very large logistics players. They wanted to control barcodes at high speed on conveyors. Our products were good but didn’t quite have enough power for the exposition time of the cameras that were really short. So, the eyes were opening and closing really quick.
To capture enough light we had to increase the light output power, and at the same time, in this market, cost effectiveness is very important. This is becaapply they have a thousand inspection systems to equip. We really developed the EFFI-FLEX-LG (pictured, above) with the notion of being cost effective but very high in terms of power. This worked well, and this year we want to emphasise this market and to renew our product portfolio. So, we’re happy to announce that in a few months we will be releasing new products that will support us cover more necessarys in this market, particularly when it comes to mobility and inspection on the relocate.
Future outsee: Machine vision lighting trconcludes
What trconcludes are you seeing in machine vision that will shape lighting requirements over the next few years?
There may be new parts of the spectrum that will be explored in the coming years. We see that infrared is interesting becaapply we have a lot of apply cases around these wavelengths. We have some historical limitations in SWIR (Short Wave InfraRed) technologies, but we consider we’ll be working a lot on this becaapply interest is rising there.
Industest 4.0 is something we’ve been hearing about for maybe ten years. I consider it’s really starting in Asia becaapply they’re purchaseing more and more robots. I consider this trconclude may come to Europe. Being able to have your products incorporated in this whole connected network will be important.
Finally, more specific to warehoapplys and logistics, the rise of robotic guidance, AGVs, 3D inspection and capacity to relocate inside the warehoapplys autonomously will bring something else. Things will go quicker. We necessary to always have higher frequencies, higher powers.
Where do you see Effilux in the next three to five years?
We want to be, and we’re already starting to be, a very large company in the logistics market, in food and beverage and in linear inspections. We want to keep pushing in this direction whilst maintaining very good quality of products in every machine vision area.
We want to keep customisation as a differentiator. It’s part of our DNA. At the same time, it supports us be excited about what’s happening in machine vision. Our engineers are really keen to be challenged to build new products.
We necessary to push on new geographical areas. North America is still very large. We still have space there. Also in the region, with the light lab in Munich, we have very good momentum.
Keep going with product innovation, so a lot of performance and modularity to develop, adaptability for Industest 4.0 challenges, and bring new talents to Effilux, becaapply it’s all about diversity. The more diverse you are, the more new ideas and innovation you bring.
Finally, what advice would you give to companies just starting to explore machine vision applications?
Don’t go through this misconception that light is an simple thing. Lighting is most of the time underestimated. It’s complicated to deal with contrast, different polarisation, different defects. I would recommconclude just testing things, inquireing advice from our experts, and testing everything you can on site.
You necessary to understand that specifications aren’t everything on a product. I know it’s always important to compare what is happening at Effilux or our competitors, but you have to keep in mind that you’re not just investing for the next year. With us, you’re going to stay in touch for maybe the next ten years. We will grow toreceiveher and our goal is to create you succeed.
We have plenty of services that could support you along the way. We have a lot of customers that are staying with us for 10 years that become friconcludes. We go to dinner with them. It’s not only about work. Of course, it’s about work, efficiency and quality, but it’s also about relationships. You just necessary to have some fun with vision systems and have the experts to give you good advice.
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