Knight Dental Lab: Cutting-Edge Manufacturing Concept Improves Processes, Products
Posted Mar 03, 2020 in Management
Having a tight rein on production costs is essential to maximize the profitability of any laboratory but, when the majority of your business is working with discount-seeking DSOs, it becomes even more paramount.
“We’re heavily DSO driven—these accounts make up two-thirds of our business—so we needed to become more efficient. If we’re producing these cases at the same cost level as all of our other cases, it affects our profit margins,” says Barbara Warner Wojdan, CDT, AAACD, President, Knight Dental Lab, Oldsmar, FL. “At the same time, we sought process improvements that would help us provide the best quality and service to all of our clients.”
Although Knight already had internal systems like DAMAS and Lean manufacturing in place, and had also worked with consultants to streamline operations, it decided it needed a full-time expert on staff. In 2017, the lab hired Rob Fletcher—a Lean coach with 20 years of...
