Jim Gochis of Synergy Dental Partners and Richard Harrell sat down to discuss Premiere 1 Dental role in the Dental Lab market space. Richard discusses the commitment to consistency.
Episode 2 – Dental Lab Consistency
Episode 2 – Consistency
Richard:
Historically laboratories have been all about whacking the widget – making crowns, making dishes, making partials, finding technicians, all of that type of thing. And that’s the focus of labs today, yesterday and forevermore.
But with the augmentation of technology, digital manufacturing, digital printing, scanning, digital radiography, communication of patient information etc, we require less of the concern about widget whacking.
Part of the problem with widget whacking is that three technicians could do the same thing three times, and you could have nine different results. But if you print it, or mill it from a digital file/scan, you get nine identical results.
So what did we find in our years of listening to clients is missing? We found it’s really understanding what the client wants, understanding how to deliver it, and then assuring them that what they ask for is what they’ll get. In other words, tell them what you’re going to do, and then do what you told them.
And so we said, we’re going to apply a philosophy: the pareto principle which most people know as 80/20. Well in the lab historically it’s 80% whacking widget and 20% sometimes listening to the customer. So we said what if we flip that and we spent 80% of our time, resources and our people’s efforts focused on understanding and attempting to deliver on what the customer wants?
Over the past 40 years we have developed some very intimate relationships with manufacturers and material companies. And we’ve helped develop some of those companies as the byproduct of relationships as a customer.
We were a big customer for many years, for many of the major manufacturers. And at the time we had quite a number of laboratories and we were looking at how digitization and digital technology could help improve consistency.
