Solventum increases nesting efficiency of aligner models by 20% with Oqcam

They may be hard to notice, but thousands of them are produced every day. Clear aligners are the best known success story of mass customization today. In the last 25 years, they shot from relative obscurity to global popularity with reports suggesting this therapy now represents 30–45% of an orthodontic practice caseload¹. 

The discreet devices are made by thermoforming transparent plastic films on 3D-printed models of patients’ teeth. A single 3D printer can make hundreds of models in one go. Some manufacturers have a lot of printers. When manufacturing at such a large scale, it’s important to ensure that the process is fully optimized. With this in mind, Solventum, a powerhouse of the US healthcare industry, called on Oqcam.

Solventum runs a fleet of 3D Systems printers. Through close collaboration with Oqcam, they found a solution that improved their operation on several fronts. 

The most significant gains were achieved in nesting where Oqcam’s automated workflow replaced a manual process of arranging the build plate. The result is 20% more parts per each build.

Tate Holland, Manufacturing Manager at Solventum, paints a picture of the process before Oqcam. “Build plates used to require a lot of manual interaction from our operators. Aligning the models on the plates was like a big puzzle. Operators would spend a lot of time on it and, in the end, they wouldn’t get as many models on there. Plus, there was quite a bit of variation due to different skill levels of the operators,” he says.

Oqcam addressed all these challenges. “Oqcam gives us 20% more models per build, nesting is much faster, it cuts the time it takes to build the plates in half, and it gives us consistency – we know how much we’ll get every time we print,” Holland says.

From a labour efficiency standpoint, Holland estimates that each operator produces double the number of builds with Oqcam versus what they did before. 

All of this is down to the fact that the software is solving the puzzle instead of the operators. They just have to load the files. “Oqcam does all the calculations and gives us a completed build plate to execute. An operator still has to approve it, but in the next update we won’t even have to do that. It will be seamless. Oqcam took out all that manual work and automated it,” Holland explains.

Oqcam also took out the variability. “Different operators have different skills. This means that some operators place 15% more parts on a machine than others. Oqcam removes that variability and consistently places more parts than the most skilled operator,” Holland says.

Reducing machine downtime

With Oqcam taking charge of nesting, operators were reallocated to other areas. An important one is planning. They’re able to plan jobs much further ahead and ensure that machines are used better. “We have more builds ready to go and we’re turning over our printers quicker because of Oqcam,” Holland adds.

Machine downtime has also decreased because Oqcam is able to make bigger builds. While these take slightly longer to print, machines are used longer and the downtime is lower than before.

Planning has also become easier because of the dashboards. Operators used to have to walk around the facility to check each machine, write down the printing progress, and remember to return to the machine at the right time. Now all that information can be found in one place. Operators simply check the dashboard in Oqcam to see how close the printers are to finishing.  “Visualizing how many builds we have in the queue helps us manage work and move people further ahead,” Holland says.

To move things along even quicker, Oqcam sends the build automatically to the available printers. “The software takes out the work of picking and choosing, and manages the workflow a lot better than we used to. That allows us to get a better feel of how much work is already built and ready to go. It gives us more flexibility to manage our workforce,” Holland explains.

Error-proof Traceability

Oqcam has also impacted tracking and traceability. Every nest that is printed should have a sheet with the build number and all the orders tied to it. In the past, the team needed to create this document manually, which always opens up the doors to error. Oqcam creates that document automatically. 

“The document is now essentially errorproof. Because it’s created automatically, it’s only going to tell us what’s actually there, versus relying on someone manually stating what they built with that. Plus it saves us a few minutes that someone used to spend doing it manually. Now we spend zero minutes on that,” Holland says.

He’s also seen that less time is spent on training. Because certain tasks are much simpler in Oqcam, it’s easier for new staff to get up to speed with the process.

These improvements have given Holland a lot to be happy about, but he is also excited about what’s coming down the line. In particular, he’s convinced certain dashboard enhancements will help them make better business decisions.

“The real benefits to efficiency come with the next dashboard update which will include data on visualizations, data on downtime, whether machines are running or not, and how much longer until the build is done. All of that will help us operate quicker than we did in the past,” Holland concludes.

¹ Source: https://doi.org/10.2319/101022-694.1