MVPro Media – The Vision Podcast #17
Guest – Robert Franz, Group CEO at Allied Vision
In this episode, Josh speaks with Robert Franz, Group CEO of Allied Vision, about the consolidation of TKH Vision’s 2D Vision Group under the Allied Vision brand.
Robert explains the thinking behind the move, why customer centricity sits at the core of the strategy, and how bringing cameras, frame grabbers, software, and accessories under one brand simplifies system design and deployment for customers. The conversation also explores Robert’s career across sensing, optics, and automation, as well as broader industry shifts, from component-level innovation to system-level solutions, the practical role of AI in machine vision, growing demand for hybrid 2D/3D systems, and where Allied Vision sees its next phase of growth.
“AI is a big buzzword and it means different things to different people. The key is how you use algorithms or AI in a specific application so that it actually provides value to the customer — not just buzzwords” — Robert Franz
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- Podcast player
- Guest information
- Useful links
- Episode chapters
- Episode transcript
Listen to the Episode
About our Guest
Robert Franz is Group CEO of Allied Vision, one of the world’s leading providers of industrial machine vision solutions. With more than 20 years of international leadership experience across sensing, optics, automation, and industrial technology, Robert has built and scaled global businesses in highly competitive markets.
Before joining Allied Vision, he held senior roles at companies including Honeywell, where he led global optical sensing activities. At Allied Vision, Robert is driving the company’s evolution from component-focused offerings toward integrated, customer-centric vision solutions—combining cameras, software, and system expertise to support real-world deployment at scale
Useful Links
Read our article on Allied Vision’s 2D machine vision brand consolidation.
Episode Chapters
Click onto the chapters to access the relevant sections of the transcript below.
1 – From Sensing to Vision Leadership
Description:
Robert Franz reflects on his career across sensing, optics, and automation, and how those experiences shaped his perspective on real-world deployment and customer value.
2 – Why Allied Vision Is Consolidating Its 2D Vision Brands
Description:
The reasoning behind unifying TKH Vision’s 2D portfolio under the Allied Vision brand, and how a one-stop-shop approach simplifies system design for customers.
3 – From Components to Customer-Centric Solutions
Description:
A discussion on industry maturity, price pressure, and why customer experience, application support, and system-level thinking are becoming critical differentiators
4 – AI, 2D + 3D Vision, and What Comes Next
Description:
Robert shares his pragmatic view on AI in machine vision, the growing role of hybrid 2D/3D systems, and where Allied Vision sees future growth opportunities.
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00.080] – Robert Franz
There’s more competition and there’s more price competition as well. And so besides the technology advantages, you also need to focus on what we call customer centricity.
[00:00:11.760] – Josh Eastburn (host)
Welcome to the MVPRO podcast. On January 15th, Global Imaging Solutions provider TKH Vision announced a significant rebranding of its 2D vision group. The move would consolidate its various member companies under the single well-known Allied Vision brand. On the podcast today, CEO Robert Franz talks about this change, what it means for Allied’s customers, and the wider imaging industry. Under the consolidated brand, Allied Vision will develop 2D machine vision solutions from individual components to fully integrated systems. With deep application knowledge across a variety of technology areas and industries, Allied Vision focuses on tailored vision solutions that enable customers to make informed decisions based on precise information. The product portfolio ranges from line scan and area scan cameras to lenses and frame grabbers, and from image processing libraries to IP cores, all available through a single source. As a trusted partner with a global network of experts and local support, Allied Vision stands by its customers and partners, making collaboration as easy and reliable as possible. Robert Franz is the CEO of Allied Vision. With over two decades of experience in the tech and engineering sectors, Robert has a proven track record of driving innovation and operational excellence.
[00:01:21.140] – Josh Eastburn (host)
Under his leadership, Allied Vision has advanced its position in the machine vision industry, expanding its product portfolio and global reach. His strategic vision, combined with a deep understanding of emerging technologies, has positioned the company at the forefront of digital transformation in industrial automation. Robert is committed to fostering a culture of innovation, sustainability, and collaboration to meet the evolving needs of Allied Vision’s customers worldwide. Mr. Franz joined me last December to talk about the upcoming announcement. Let’s get into it.
[00:01:49.710] – Josh Eastburn (host)
So I always take a little time to review people’s LinkedIn profiles and get an idea of the kind of work that they’ve done. And you have been working for a long time. You’ve done a lot even before starting with Allied Vision. This is a podcast that’s specifically about machine vision and computer imaging, and that’s been part of your career. You’ve done a lot of other things as well, but maybe give us a sense of what role sensing and optics has played in your career up to this point?
[00:02:18.380] – Robert Franz
Yes, I was active in different companies and lived and worked in six different countries, including the US as well. But automation and sensing and optics has most of the time been a subject to that. So as an example, I worked for the company Honeywell for 14, 15 years in total. And I was running the global optical sensing business for them. And I was active in the sensing business for many years, where optical also played a role, of course. And accordingly has always played a role in automation. I also worked for a company called Retail that’s more known in Europe for industrial automation. I’m not part of the machine vision industry per se now for many years, but let’s say the surrounding industries for most of my career.
[00:03:03.640] – Josh Eastburn (host)
Do you have a favorite application or a product maybe in that space of sensing and optics that you’ve been part of?
[00:03:10.680] – Robert Franz
Yeah, so one thing that was really interesting was optical sensors on the outside of the passenger car for Kia access function. And so we have developed that at the time. This is now almost 20 years ago. But we developed that, as you can imagine, optical sensor on the outside of a passenger car. This is quite an environment.
[00:03:30.740] – Josh Eastburn (host)
20 years ago, especially, yes.
[00:03:32.900] – Robert Franz
And so our main customer was Renault and we introduced our sensor into all their platforms and we became number one in that application worldwide. Another very interesting application that we are serving today that I like a lot. There’s actually a company that is active in fish farming. So you’re in the open sea. And they are providing devices that are used to where the cameras are used to monitor the status of the fish. Every fish has a different face actually, and like that too. And with that device, they have a laser beam that can shoot off parasites of the fish and in the open sea environment. And that is also avoiding antibiotics being put into the open sea. So this is an application I like as lot as well because it’s serving a great purpose and it’s also again a challenging environment.
[00:04:22.900] – Josh Eastburn (host)
Yeah, a challenging environment and just a fascinating application that I wouldn’t have thought of. That’s incredible. So there are big things happening with Allied Vision right now. What specifically is changing?
[00:04:33.780] – Robert Franz
So the background is that so far we are operating as what we call TKH 2D Vision Group. That is a group of companies depending on how you count it companies and brands somewhere between six or seven, yeah. And we have made the decision in October of this year to consolidate all of these companies under one brand. One brand is Allied Vision. Why is it Allied Vision? That’s the brand that has by far the biggest brand equity. It’s the most traction, website visits, all these type of KPIs you look at. And so we are consolidating under that. Why do we do it? Not so much like what you see in cases like this for cost synergies, but it’s really much more around making things easy for our customers. We have different, let’s say, levels of cameras between Allied and SBS, for example. Then we have frame grabbers from Euresys. We have software offerings as well. We have accessory offerings. And today a customer needs to go to different companies to purchase these different components to come to a solution. And by combining everything under one brand and one go-to-market, we make it very easy for our customers to get everything out of one hand.
[00:05:41.790] – Robert Franz
That’s what we call what One-Stop shop.
[00:05:44.090] – Josh Eastburn (host)
One thing I’m interested in is understanding kind of what you see as the strengths or the unique qualities of each of the brands that are now going to be part of Allied Vision.
[00:05:53.450] – Josh Eastburn (host)
What do you think each one brings?
[00:05:55.210] – Robert Franz
Yeah, so I think they started with Allied Vision. So the Allied Vision as of today, this is really a unique company from our perspective in terms of the ability to deliver high volumes and an industrial grade quality. This is something that we that is primarily driven by the Alvium product line, now that you or your viewers are heroes, those here that are listeners, are familiar with, yeah. So that is a specific one that’s also the largest of the companies. Then you have SVS-Vistek with a focus on the high speed and high resolution cameras. And so this is more of their specialty. So this is, we think that there’s like a pyramid of the product portfolio. It’s on top of AIlied Vision in terms of capability, not advice. Then you have NeuroSys, the leading company for frame grabbers, and they also have a strong software offering. Then you have ChromaSpine, which is a leading company in line scale, and also in higher level solutions. Then there’s ADG as well. They have very much specialized on medical applications, primarily endoscopy applications. So you see everyone has their specialty, there’s not so much overlap. And so this is where we see a lot of value of bringing those offerings together to make it easy for the customers.
[00:07:13.950] – Josh Eastburn (host)
And what changes can your customers expect to see in the short term and in, let’s say, the next few years?
[00:07:20.510] – Robert Franz
So what we are developing now is that in January we will launch one common website. This is typically a strong tool of communication, of course. And the idea is really to have a one stop shop so that there’s one single interface for the customer to interface with.
[00:07:36.410] – Robert Franz
So the customer can talk to the sales organization of main Allied Vision, and through that one interface have access to all the offerings of the whole group. And this, yeah, I think this is a major step for us and I hope for the customers as well.
[00:07:52.170] – Josh Eastburn (host)
Yeah. So that makes sense that on the sales side that we’ll have a more streamlined experience for the customer. How about on the customer support side or on responding to customer requirements, where there’s a need for new kinds of product development? How do you see this change being beneficial for that?
[00:08:09.850] – Robert Franz
There are a couple of aspects there on the customer support side. So we are bringing together the application engineering resources we have. And those are typically resources that customers love to interact with. They get a lot of good advice there in terms of essentially how to solve their problems. And within Allied Vision, we have very strong processes and resources around that will then also benefit the other operating companies. Yeah. So I think this is step number one where I see quite some value for customers. And then secondly, what we’re also doing is we are bundling the R&D resources of the group in a way that we say, okay, so how do we really make further steps from going from products to solutions and how do we focus our resources on developing those products and solutions that provide the most value to the customers. And if you can look at the larger group of resources that way, then the outcome will be faster and better as compared to the smaller setup. So this is only natural. And I think this is also to answer your question on the mid and long term, this is certainly something that will change quite a bit.
[00:09:13.760] – Robert Franz
And we have already developed a product portfolio roadmap for the whole group for the next five years. And so we are now getting in the execution mode of it.
[00:09:23.300] – Josh Eastburn (host)
I imagine that’s a pretty big undertaking. I noticed that mergers and acquisitions have been a big part of your career up to this point. And I don’t imagine we can really get into the details of that, but taking, yeah, like you said, six or seven organizations and trying to get them to work together as a single unit sounds challenging. For you as the leader of that organization, what are some of the key principles that you try to keep in mind to make that successful?
[00:09:49.590] – Robert Franz
Yeah, so as you allude to, I’ve done these things a couple of times in my career and I’ve experienced different approaches to that. So you can do this type of work, you can do that very quickly. You can say, okay, there’s January 1st and everybody’s one organization and we just make that work. The approach that we have chosen, the approach that we have chosen is actually, let’s say, honoring the DNA of the companies in a way that won’t destroy value through consolidation. And that’s why we said, okay, let’s do this step by step. This is one aspect that is important for us, not to over speed in that. I think this is also driven by, as I said earlier, our focus is really more on the customer side and not so much on the cost side with the consolidation here. It’s really about driving value for the customer. And this is the other principle that we’re using here, is to really focus on what is providing value to the customer and not necessarily making it easier for us. Make these steps. We always start with the front end of the organization and always look at sales and marketing and how do we again make communication easy for a customer and get the support that you need to make that easy.
[00:10:59.850] – Robert Franz
And then the final steps are more on the back end, but they are comparatively minor compared to the consolidation of other brands.
[00:11:06.970] – Josh Eastburn (host)
When you think about, let’s say, some of the present challenges in the industry or big trends that are capturing a lot of attention. How do you feel like this change positions Allied Vision to respond better to some of those developments?
[00:11:22.370] – Robert Franz
Yeah, there’s certainly a trend that goes from individual components, more to systems and solutions. I think the steps we are taking here are absolutely required to become further credible in those areas. Because if you are, it’s probably obvious if you look at distinct companies, versus you bring offerings together, then it’s much easier to form systems and solutions that make sense for the customer. So from there, I think this is really serving things well. Then I do see a certain consolidation going on in the vision industry. As the industry matures, you have additional aspects playing a role. I think this is an industry that has been driven very much by technology and it will continue to be driven by technology. But there’s more competition and there’s more price competition as well. And so besides the technology advantages, you also need to focus on what we call customer centricity. So everything that touches the customer. And that can be things like, what’s the delivery performance? What’s the quality of your sales organization? What’s the quality of the technical consultative sales you can do? So all these things that are actually targeted at the customer’s problem, that are disconnected from the product itself.
[00:12:36.170] – Robert Franz
So you need to add that to the mix. And that way you have very good successes. And I’ve seen that actually in other industries as well a lot. And one testament to that is actually that the Allied Vision customer surveys are always well above average. So I think we have already a good operating model for that. We are rolling that out further step by step.
[00:12:57.850] – Josh Eastburn (host)
Are there specific technologies that you’re hoping to explore? For example, we hear a lot about AI, deep learning, and how that’s being integrated into so many different types of products. Is there something in the back of your mind that says, okay, we’ll be able to do more with that now because of the way that we’re organized?
[00:13:15.670] – Robert Franz
So we have software development primarily in Eurasys, and there are software development on the level of SDKs and so forth, and the other camera companies. We will certainly put more resources on that to drive things even further. That’s clear. I think when I think about AI, I really appreciate the differentiated view here because AI obviously is a very big buzzword and it means different things, different people. I think the key is really in how do I use algorithms or AI in a specific application so that it really provides value to the customer. And it’s not just the buzzwords. This is what we are focusing on. So we are focusing on specific applications and providing value within those. Yeah. And that’s really the focus for us. There’s a second aspect for me with AI that I maybe are familiar with that. I always call that the shovel strategy. So this comes back from the gold rush actually. And yeah, many, many years ago. And the people that sold the shovels to the gold diggers made more money than the gold diggers themselves. Yeah. It’s also an example that’s used many times with NVIDIA and the GPUs.
[00:14:21.210] – Robert Franz
Yeah. That are super powerful. Yeah. So this is how I also see our role in this. We are not the ones to develop an LLM or so. Yeah. But with the images, we are enabling many AI applications. And this is why I’m very positive about the future of this industry.
[00:14:37.760] – Josh Eastburn (host)
I’m also thinking about 3D vision that’s certainly having its day right now. And I understand within TKH there are potential synergies, right? With companies like LMI technologies that specialize in 3D. Yeah. Do you see this development within Allied Vision affecting that partnership at all, that collaboration?
[00:14:56.790] – Robert Franz
So we have already a good collaboration with LMI within the group. And so that that will further solidify. I think this is also an aspect of moving the brands under Allied Vision on the 2D side, moving them closer together makes a collaboration or eases that a little bit. But it has already been very strong. We have just finished the joint development of a smart camera offering that we have launched already now in August timeframe. We are sharing, for example, also software offerings on a TKH vision level. TKH Vision being the brand above 2D and 3D. 3D. Yeah. And so this will further continue. I think there’s quite some demand in certain very specific applications for a combination of 2D and 3D. Yeah. And so I think this will also benefit in LMI to be able to have 2D offerings as well on their side. Yeah. So then we play it in the way that it makes more sense for the customer. The business may go through, through us, may go through LMI, however we can best serve the customer.
[00:15:55.460] – Josh Eastburn (host)
You’ve repeated that message and I respect that. Do you have a long-term vision of where this new Allied Vision is going in the next, let’s say, five to 10 years?
[00:16:05.300] – Robert Franz
So the vision that we have is to make this maybe the leading player in the industry. So today we are number three by market share. There are two companies in front of us, but that’s not unachievable. We also stay acquisitive. So this is something that we are also looking at beside the organic growth path. We are always looking at acquisitions that make sense for us. And I see there’s a lot of growth coming. One area that we see a lot of growth is the defense sector. We have won a lot of business and obviously for reasons that nobody likes, but it’s a booming market. And so I think that’s an area where we will further engage.
[00:16:44.230] – Josh Eastburn (host)
If there were, let’s say, one message that you could convey to Allied Visions customers about this change and what it will mean for them. What would that message be?
[00:16:53.400] – Robert Franz
I hope is certainly that we are doing this consolidation to better serve our customers and provide further and additional value to them. This is really front and center for us, being customer centric and providing value. I think that speaks for itself.
[00:17:06.800] – Josh Eastburn (host)
Sounds like smart business all around.
[00:17:09.040] – Josh Eastburn (host)
Okay.I think we spent our time pretty well.
[00:17:12.200] – Josh Eastburn (host)
Thank you so much, Robert.
[00:17:13.440] – Robert Franz
Thank you. Bye-bye.
[00:17:15.760] – Josh Eastburn (host)
For more on the changes happening at Allied Vision, check the show notes for a link to the original press release or visit alliedvision.com/en/news.
[00:17:23.900] – Josh Eastburn (host)
Thank you to Robert Franz, Natalie Tuvan, and Allied Vision for sponsoring today’s episode of the MV Pro Podcast. Visit MVProMedia.com to find all our coverage on the changing vision market, including our recent coverage of how the vision market was on display at the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show. Until next time, I’m Josh Eastburn for MV Pro Media. Be well.
