Darren Greenhalgh I had the pleasure of visiting Glidewell laboratory and had a tour of all of their facilities and was thoroughly impressed with what I saw.
Dr. Mike Ditolla graciously spent his whole Friday morning with me and showed me the ins and outs of Glidewell and all of its manufacturing facilities.
It was an impressive layout – we covered about 5 different buildings. My first impression was when I walked up to the reception desk – with all the hustle and bustle of this lab – that is probably the last place I would ever want to work – it just seemed absolutely crazy. The receptionist was very nice and seemed very content and happy with what was going on. I was shortly escorted into the main receiving area – if the front desk was crazy – this place was nuts. Glidewell receives so much packaging that they have their own zip code for just the main receiving building. We went upstairs and saw the main floors of the laboratory – they are on two separate floors, one is the pfm lab and the other is mostly emax and bruxzir. In separate buildings they have the removable and implant labs. As of now Mike said that pretty much every case that comes through the doors is digitally scanned with one of three different cad/cam systems. Interestingly, part of one of the floors is a teaching facility in which Glidewell will instruct their employees in various lab duties – Glidewell hires 15 – 25 new employees every Monday. These employees are paid on production, so the more cases they do the more they are paid, but if there ever is a redo – that comes out of their compensation. Funny enough Mike told me that they have had problems with getting the employees to only work 8 hours and it can be difficult for the HR department to make sure they go home after 8 hours and not try and clock back in to do more work. Off to the 3rd and 4th buildings – as you walk around you can see that there are systems in place and that they must be pretty impeccable in order to keep that much organized. In the 4th building is where I was able to grab a picture of the vending machine that I thought was ingenious.
This vending machine has many pieces of equipment – mostly burs that are used in the c&c machines.
Mike told me of a story that Glidewell has a sister lab in South America. Years ago they sent down over 20 ovens to the lab and when they went down to visit there was only 3 or 4 ovens in the lab – that is when Glidewell decided to track everything and who was using what.
What was really the most impressive was the bruxir manufacturing center and some of the amazing machinery and manufacturing processes that this product requires.
Mike told me about the frugality of Jim Glidewell – he has quite a reputation and fondness of the .99cent store and eBay! Actually Mike asked some of the employees in the warehouse where did these huge c&c machines come from and they told Mike – eBay! These machines where making plastic articulators and plastic denture/retainer cases. Across the floor they were making screws for their implant system on more huge c&c machines.
From the calm, welcoming front desk, to the tour, to the onsite teaching facilities, to the ongoing expansion of their business – It was a very impressive set up and made me think of my little office and how I can apply things I saw and observed into a more efficient system and business back home.
I had a talk with my assistants again about being frugal – easiest way I found to do this is to explain to them the cost of our bonding agents $80,000.00/gallon! I had a staff meeting and reiterated to my staff that if we have the systems in place that the machine/office will run perfectly smooth, we went over a few systems and tweaked them.
I don’t expect you to start browsing eBay for a vending machine for your CEREC burs, but if we could apply the genius of Glidewell on a small scale it would be hugely beneficial to business.
