Laboratory in the limelight: IW Dental Laboratory

We speak to Ian Woolley from IW Dental Laboratory, highly deserved winners of the Laboratory of the Year 2015 award.

 

Can you tell us a little about how and when the lab was created, and how the business has grown since then?

I qualified in Durban South Africa in 1993 completing a four-year course that covered all aspects of dental technology and then worked in many labs in South Africa and the UK, gaining as much experience as possible and as years went on taking great interest in implantology. IW Dental was established in 2009. My aim was to establish a fully digitalised full service dental laboratory that could produce quality work using the latest technology and materials available to us as technicians and embrace this to establish ourselves as one of the leading UK labs.

Starting with four technicians the lab has grown to 16, over the period of five years. This has been slow organic growth and with the use of some marketing has mainly been word of mouth. We have shown over the past few years that with the fantastic team we have and the investment in technology we have been able to create a lab that with continued investment will be here for many years to come.

 

What type of work does your laboratory carry out?

We established our lab as a specialist implant and aesthetic crown and bridge laboratory and later incorporated a prosthetics department with the shift to acrylic applications being used on large implant cases, and immediate loading implant cases. All of the above have grown over the years with a very strong presence of all-ceramic aesthetic restorations such as Emax and zirconia. We are also working with the polymers for implant bars like Bredent and BioHPP and we are always looking for new materials and methods to take us forward in our development as a lab.

 

How many people work there at the lab?

The most important aspect of day to day life in any medium sized lab are the staff that work within it and the method of managing work flow around these members of staff. We are very lucky to have some very experienced staff that look after the individual departments within the lab, namely Margaret May (admin), Jon Perkins (prosthetics) and Will Kovacic (implants and gold department), Piotr Wozniak (CAD/CAM and milling), Jeremy Dempsey (models), and the overall responsibility of running the lab on a day to day basis Russell Jackson (ceramic manager/laboratory manager). Each manager is responsible for quality control in their department as well as maintaining work flow and discussing problems and case solutions with our clients and communicating directly with me.

 

You won Best Laboratory at the 2015 Lab Awards – what do you think is the secret to your success?

The 2015 Dental Laboratory Awards was an amazing experience for our whole team as we had no inkling that we would win an award let alone come home with three! We entered the 2013 lab awards and although disappointed we didn’t win anything, had an amazing evening and felt it was a great team building exercise for us all.

 

So when we decided to enter the 2015 Awards we took the approach of it being a great opportunity to attend the awards with all the lab staff and to enjoy the evening and if we came back with something, that would be an added bonus. Therefore to win Best Implant Lab, Best Private Lab and Best Overall Dental Lab 2015 was just amazing and fantastic for our staff to be recognised for all their hard work they put in every day. I think that our success is based on our continued re-investment of profits back into the laboratory and by doing this allowing us to have state-of-the-art equipment and the latest technology. We are an innovative forward thinking laboratory with forward thinking staff.

 

How do you stay on top of the latest developments in products and techniques, and at what stage do you decide to integrate them into your lab?

I have never been afraid of change and new technology and see this as the way forward so six years ago when I saw the Roland dwx 50 milling machine at the Cologne dental show, I knew we had to have it so we could start working with it and integrate it into our laboratory. We had been scanning and out-sourcing for a few years but I did not like the lack of control and the fact that we did not get instant results to experiment with and develop.  We have never looked back from that day opening up an entirely new world of dental technology for us as a lab, today we run five milling machines and work with some of the industry’s leading material manufactures to achieve the best results possible.

 

Our view on CAD/CAM is that we will only purchase open scanners, open software and open milling machines.  This allows us to use what works best out there in the industry and allows us to change things to operate the way we want them to and therefore get the best results possible.  We find that very often these things are developed outside of the laboratory environment so don’t always suit our working environment in the way we expect, but with total control we can change this to suit us and our needs.

 

What kind of equipment/technology is currently available at the lab?

Our lab structure is one that every case that comes into the lab is scanned whether it is milled in wax, pmma , titanium, chrome cobalt, zirconium or hybrid materials we run a 3-shape scanner and a Medit scanner both with fully open capabilities. We also run separate CAM software that allows us to run our machines and make our own milling strategies. This is very important, as we do not use any pre-defined strategies but develop our own for each specific material or application.

 

We then run two large five-axis milling machines the larger weighing a tonne and two smaller Roland machines, one of which is nearly six years old and has run a minimum of five hours a day since we got it. We still cast our precious metals and use a state of the art vacuum casting for this. As far as implants go we have 77 implant connections that by the middle of the year we will be able to mill on our machines and currently can mill all major implant brands to fixture head. We also utilise implant manufactures software to mill over their titanium link abutments on our machines to provide solutions for clients that want to work with original components.

 

What have been the major challenges in establishing and running the business?

One of the major challenges for me has been to find dentists that are as forward thinking as us to try and to use these new materials and solutions for example, Zirconium is used as the major substructure base for ceramics in most countries of the world but only used 20-30% in the UK yet it has been on the market for nearly 20 years. We don’t have any issues in working with whatever materials our clients request but without trying the new materials on the market, we may never find that ultimate solution…..that I personally don’t think we have found yet.

 

How important is continuing education for you and your team? Are there enough training options for dental technicians in the UK?

Educating my staff is very important to keep them up to date with new techniques, methods and materials on the market. I encourage my staff to read the many publications that come into the lab and also use the internet and a great source of information for our industry. We have also sent our staff abroad on Implant and Emax courses as well as to UK based courses. However, I do think there is room at present for Dental Companies to consider running more regional courses, thus making them more accessible to all Labs.

 

What do you think is the key to developing good relationships with your dentist clients and the profession as a whole?

Communication has been the key to developing good relationships with our clients, discussing cases and case solutions to get the best results.  We always strive to give the best possible service at all times and encourage our clients to send patients free of charge to us to take photos and do personal shade takes or send us photographs via email if they are out of the area. We also encourage surgeries to bring their teams to the lab for a couple of hours to see how we work and to meet and communicate with the technicians as this builds client relationships between us.

 

What do you think is the most successful way of running a dental laboratory in the current economic/dental profession climate?

Firstly to be successful as a business have a good accountant that knows your business and that you can communicate with as they should be able to advise you on every move. I think our success in the current climate has to be down to the fact that we are totally self-sufficient as a lab and therefore can control our costs by sourcing our raw materials directly from manufactures and utilising these materials as our machines are open. I also think that it is imperative as a lab owner to know what your production costs are and what your costs and labour costs are for each employee in the lab.  I personally think that many labs don’t know their cost properly and therefore don’t know what profit they make from every individual item in a lab. From a quality point of view we restrict the amount of porcelain units our technicians can do to eight units per day this I believe gives them sufficient time to create quality consistent work and coupled with the consistency of the milled frameworks is the key.

 

What are the future aims of the lab?

I think the future of labs is without a doubt going to be digital and even the many sceptics of milling and scanning would have to admit it has been amazing and changed the face of our industry and is definitely here to stay. Further progress will be made with materials, software and methods of manufacturing in the future. As a lab we intend to stay at the forefront of technology.

 

Where do you see dental technology going in the next decade or so?

We will continue to re-invest profits into the technology and staff and will continue to invest in our implant development until we can mill every connection bridge and single and provide our customers with fantastic in-house solutions for every situation, with quick reliable, quality service.

 

What are your top tips for maintaining a successful laboratory?

Look after your employees, know your costs as this will allow you to reinvest your profits and create a sustainable long-term business.

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The 2017 Laboratory Awards are currently open for entry:

 

This was originally published in Laboratory magazine.