What You Need to Know to Assess a Thermal Camera Supplier's Innovation Capability

Innovation is a key success factor in all high-tech industries, and thermal imaging is no exception. When selecting a thermal imaging system supplier, you need to understand the supplier's ability to innovate. Of course, your supplier must be capable and experienced. But you must also understand whether your suppliers are ready to introduce innovative products and applications that respond to emerging market demands. Your supplier is not just a component supplier, but should also be positioned as an expert partner with in-depth knowledge of the latest market trends and able to bring you innovative, disruptive technologies that are in line with the direction of the market.

Read on to learn how to evaluate the innovation capabilities of potential thermal imaging sensor suppliers. You'll learn the key criteria for evaluation when determining whether your supplier is able to demonstrate key innovative capabilities.

Scientific research plays an important role in thermal imaging. Thermal imaging is an advanced technology with complex underlying mathematics and physics. Therefore, suppliers must work closely with research institutions. Vendors with strong relationships with research institutions will benefit from significant support and access to a multidisciplinary network of experts in emerging enabling technologies who will enable tomorrow's innovations. Some research institutions also provide their partners with access to advanced equipment and facilities, as well as top scientists.

Does your potential supplier have a partnership with a technical research organization or research laboratory? If so, it's a good indicator of how committed your supplier is to innovating to continue meeting customer needs.

Collaborations with research institutions are a good place to start. But you also want to see tangible evidence of innovation. A potential supplier's patent portfolio is one way to measure this. Patents are assets that your suppliers can use to innovate and grow. It protects your suppliers' technological innovations from being used by competitors. If your potential suppliers file patents on a regular basis, you can rest assured that they are investing heavily in research and development, another good measure of innovation.

Suppliers' physical facilities also indicate their ability to innovate. Some thermal sensor manufacturers' factories are as advanced as any research laboratory. You may need to look for a clean room (where the air is pressurized, filtered, and temperature and humidity controlled to keep contaminants out). Another thing you need to check is the data facility where the company's engineers can work on the product data.

Last but not least, you should look at potential suppliers' employees. Who are they? How are they organized? Is there an R&D team assigned to internal projects? Are there many employees with scientific backgrounds? Does the company hire PhD students or partner with PhD programs to conduct cutting-edge research in-house? Does the company partner with startups to develop new products?

The answers to these questions will give you an idea of the vendor's ability to innovate.

The range of applications for infrared technology is rapidly expanding. The technology is making inroads into consumer markets such as outdoor and leisure, as well as mainstream commercial markets such as thermal imaging. At the same time, advances in technologies such as artificial intelligence have made infrared devices more powerful, and the technology is targeting new and emerging segments of the automotive market. Having a supplier who can develop products for these rapidly changing and innovation-driven markets is an advantage to your business.

So before you start working together, sit down with your potential suppliers and talk about innovation. You should be prepared to articulate your specific needs in terms of innovation so that your suppliers can give you a clear answer as to whether they are willing and able to support you.

JAVOL is a professional custom infrared imaging equipment manufacturer. We have a young and challenging technical research and development team. All product design engineers have a bachelor's degree or above. The team is personally led by senior doctors from famous universities to develop products that meet customer needs. Everyone on the technical team has special expertise, including software design, hardware design, mechanical structure design, etc. In the future, we will continue to develop new solutions to enrich different models and functions for different application scenarios. We will also enhance AI and image enhancement algorithms to provide users with "humanized" products and applications. If you want to order infrared thermal imaging equipment, please contact us.