Konica Minolta to Drive Automated Visual Inspection Business
Acquisition of Eines Systems, Spain-based leading company, will enhance growth in auto visual inspection for automotive industry.

Aim of Acquisition

Konica Minolta’s sensing business offers various products and solutions in the fields of light source color measurement and object color measurement based on the optical technologies developed in its former camera business and continually refined thereafter.

The products and solutions offered by Konica Minolta contribute to improving quality and productivity at customers’ manufacturing sites. As the company has been expanding the business base in its core-competent ICT industry, consisting of products such as LCD displays and OLED screens, it has been driving, as part of its growth strategy, promotion of the development of technologies and products to meet automation needs in the automotive sector.

Eines Systems, as a leading technology company, has competitive edges in the mainstay business for providing automated quality inspection systems and solutions for automotive production process. The company highly excels in the customer-driven agile development for its global customer base.

Currently various processes of visual inspection in the automotive industry largely depend on human eyes, facing challenges such as quality improvement, more stable results and labor saving. Addressing those challenges, Eines Systems has developed automotive painting visual inspection systems in recent years, which have been utilized in European customers. The company is planning further implementation of the systems in regions beyond Europe.

Aligning its efforts in expanding automated inspection market for the automotive sector, Konica Minolta will fully utilize the strengths with its global customer base in the color and light measurement fields and global networks and take advantage of synergy opportunities from Eines Systems and Konica Minolta’s own optical and imaging technologies. Welcoming Eines Systems, the Konica Minolta Group will accelerate launch of the visual inspection businesses for the automotive industry.
The transaction was closed on May 31, 2019.

Overview of Eines Systems

About Konica Minolta’s Sensing Business

Many Konica Minolta products are used as de facto standard color measurement instruments. Notably, Konica Minolta has more than a 50% share in the global market for display image quality measurement and inspection (estimated by Konica Minolta), and has a solid presence as the market leader.

Konica Minolta has actively promoted investments to strengthen its competitiveness. In 2012, the company acquired Instrument Systems GmbH (Germany) which develops high-end optical measuring instruments and has an outstanding track record in the high-performance measurement of displays and LED lighting devices. In 2015, the company acquired Radiant Vision Systems, LLC (U.S.) which excels at high-resolution 2D measurement instruments for displays, image processing software, and automatic appearance inspection systems.

Konica Minolta remains committed to developing its measuring instrument business as a market leader by offering various high value-added products and solutions that enable high-precision measurement of light and color for the ever-growing ICT and automobile industries.