Strategy: Strategic Backlogs and Monthly Meeting Cadence

In order to increase productivity, we began looking at how work moves through the lab. And while the term ‘backlog’ is generally thought to be negative, we found three areas where a bit of a case backlog would be particularly beneficial.

In our milling department we used to nest and mill restorations as they arrived in the department. Sometimes this meant we were milling just 10 restorations out of a disk, rather than nesting to capacity, which created a lot of material waste. Today, we hold cases until we have enough restorations to completely fill the disk, maximizing material usage and helping us save thousands of dollars annually.

In our stain and glaze department, rather than going back and forth between different shades, our technicians now batch restorations until we have a decent pile in the same shade so we can more efficiently knock them out. Using this method, we’ve found our technicians can be twice as productive: the...