Dent All Group chooses Oqcam to increase productivity for metal 3D printing and milling

Dent All Group is one of the largest production centers for dental prostheses in Europe. Founded in 2006, the company provides a wide range of state-of-the-art metal 3D printing and milling capabilities for fixed and removable prostheses. Dent All Group serves dental labs around Western Europe from a new production site completed in 2023.

“We are essentially a one-stop-shop for dental labs because we can provide CAD services and high-quality production at scale,” says Michael Gauthier, CEO of Dent All Group.

The Dent All Group production center runs 24 hours a day to maximize productivity and ensure short lead times. One of the biggest challenges the company faces happens when the data preparation team must process incoming files very quickly to keep the production queues full.

“Our biggest issue was nesting incoming orders fast enough to keep up with the rhythm of production and avoid losing any machine capacity,” Michael says. “When you’re running a facility of this size and scale, it’s critical to remain as efficient as possible. We have to be able to scale up production at a moment’s notice without increasing the size of our team.”

Complicating this issue is the fact that Dent All Group’s customers expect very fast turnaround times, because they are under similar time pressure. Most dental labs operate during normal business hours, which means Dent All Group typically sees two daily spikes in orders: one when customers start their day and another just before they close.

“We are always trying to push ourselves to reduce delivery times and improve customer service,” Michael says. “That’s why we needed a better software solution for the front end.”

Accelerating order preparation

The specific challenge Dent All Group needed to solve was the amount of time involved in preparing incoming orders for metal 3D printing.

As orders arrived throughout the day, Dent All Group technicians had to check the design of each part to ensure that a removable partial denture (RPD), for example, was suitable for metal 3D printing. If the design passed the initial check, technicians then had to orient, label, support, and nest the parts one by one, and then organize the nested jobs for production.

This pre-production step was taking up to 90 minutes per build plate. This made Dent All Group receptive when Oqcam proposed a more efficient approach, one driven by its AI-powered dental production software designed for smart CAM workflow automation.

“Since we introduced Oqcam, the process is much less time-consuming,” Michael says. “The initial design check is now done automatically. The nesting process is semi-automatic, so we keep a human in the loop to verify everything. Overall, the time it takes to do all this has been cut by 60 percent.”

Dent All Group sees similar benefits for its milling operation. Prior to introducing Oqcam, a technician had to download each incoming order, perform the initial design check, orient, label, place pins in, and nest each crown one at a time in a slow, painstaking process.

“With Oqcam, all milling files are prepared in parallel,” Michael says. “We can import a batch of files, which Oqcam verifies simultaneously and nests automatically. Based on the data in each order, Oqcam recognizes what disk is required, including the shade, thickness, and type of zirconia. All we have to do is check the nesting and dispatch the jobs. It’s a game changer for us.”

Increasing capacity without increasing headcount

The operational impact of highly efficient file preparation is significant.

Because Dent All Group has streamlined the front-end process, it can comfortably offer customers a guaranteed delivery time as long as their files arrive before a predetermined deadline. In fact, with the increase in efficiency that Oqcam enables, Dent All Group has reduced its standard lead time for a polished RPD from three days to two days. This is an important difference, as shorter lead time is a critical competitive advantage.

“Using Oqcam is so much faster than completing these steps manually,” Michael says. “Not only does it help us all day, it helps us all year. There is seasonality in the dental industry, and now we can easily handle those periods when production doubles.”

Handling 30-35% increases in volume without adding operators gives Dent All Group a critical competitive advantage. The company, for example, has reduced its recruitment needs by one full-time position just within the zirconia team.

“We have increased our capacity with the same number of people and machines, which is a great achievement,” Michael says. “The cherry on top is that the AI within Oqcam gets increasingly intelligent, which results in even more efficient nesting over time and fewer overall defects. In other words, we are increasing production speed while keeping product quality consistent.”

Planning for future growth

In addition to the increase in efficiency, the Oqcam solution has been easy for Dent All Group to adopt. Oqcam collaborated with Dent All to integrate the software with the company’s customized in-house ERP system, a connection that now enables real-time file processing throughout the day. The uptick in production speed gives Dent All Group more flexibility to assign operators wherever they are needed most urgently. And the software itself features a user-friendly interface that the team can navigate comfortably.

Michael also cites the technical support from Oqcam as an important benefit.

“The technical team at Oqcam is always available to help our operators through the chat line,” he says. “Recently I was speaking to an operator who was covering for a co-worker who was away and any time she had questions she received an answer from the Oqcam team very quickly.”

Of course, one of the most important differences with Oqcam is its scalability, which aligns with how much the Dent All Group wants to grow in the coming years.

“I am really confident in the Oqcam team,” Michael says. “We started implementing Oqcam little by little and now we’re ready to continue to grow.”