Ten questions for Johannes Zurin over a cup of coffee. Aged 29, he has been with SVS-Vistek since March 2014 as a sales manager for EMEA excluding GAS.
When you were a little boy, what did you want to do when you grew up?
I wanted to be a pilot – probably like any other little boy. Unfortunately, Lufthansa did not require such young pilots! And when did you decide on a career in sales? During my studies of bioprocess informatics. I gained an interest in sales at an early stage. Of course, contact with different cultures and countries is also an aspect which pushed me in this direction.
What are your duties at SVS-Vistek?
I am the sales manager for EMEA excluding GAS, in other words Europe, the Middle East and Africa with the exception of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. In this position, I am responsible for establishing and looking after our sales network of distributors and integrators.
What projects are you working on at the moment?
A large number of course. At the moment, the focus is on the strategic development of sales channels, the observation of trends in the machine vision market in Europe and the market leadership of our brand-new EXO series. As well as this, I am working with our development department on a specific camera solution for one particular customer in the traffic technology segment.
What is your favorite product and why?
It’s almost possible to decide. One highlight, of course, is our 47-MP camera which is currently in the final stages of development and will soon be coming onto the market. It will allow us to set new standards in machine vision and perfectly supplement our portfolio at the top end. There is not a sales manager alive who would not love to have a product like this in his or her range.
What has been your most interesting/unusual project involving a camera from the SVCam family?
The high-resolution HR29 with 29 megapixels and the widespread Dual GigE interface was used for the surface inspection of smartphones and tablets. With its precision, dynamics and reliability, the HR29 is the perfect camera for this job. This gives you an idea of the possible future applications for machine vision.
What do you consider the main trends in industrial machine vision to be in 2016?
There is a clear trend towards the new high-quality Sony IMX sensors, which are currently setting new standards in CMOS technology. Generally speaking, we see a substantial trend towards increasingly higher resolutions.
You work with high-resolution high-tech cameras for industry each day – what sort of camera do you use privately?
To be quite honest, I’m not really a talented photographer. I simply use my mobile phone for snapshots.
What do you do when you are not visiting customers for SVS-Vistek?
In my leisure time, I enjoy my wonderful upper Bavarian home with its mountains, lakes and beer gardens. In my job, I try to identify trends and ensure that our customers’ input is incorporated into our ongoing development efforts.
What are your personal wishes for 2016?
A successful year for our customers and suppliers on the basis of old and new contacts and relations in Germany and other countries.
Many thanks for the conversation.