Pictured at the OptoTech exhibit at International Vision Expo West in Las Vegas are CEO Roland Mandler (l) and industry veteran Matt Schmidt-Wetekam, who is serving as a consultant to OptoTech.
GERMANTOWN, Wis.—OptoTech, a leading manufacturer of ophthalmic lens processing and precision optics equipment based in Germany, is significantly expanding its presence in the U.S.

The company is setting up a 17,000 square foot customer support center. The new facility will be dedicated to ophthalmic optics and will be staffed with sales, service and marketing personnel. It will be operational beginning January, 2015. OptoTech’s existing facility in Pennsylvania will continue to serve precision optics customers.

Matt Schmidt-Wetekam, an industry veteran and former president of Loh Optical Machinery, has been retained by OptoTech as a consultant to assist in the establishment, staffing and sales of the new customer support center.

Schmidt-Wetekam has worked in the optical machinery industry for more than 10 years and then became his own customer as COO for Hoya Vision NA and later as co-owner and founder of the Perfect Optics Lab in San Diego, Calif. He said, “I realized that customer support, service and machine uptime are the key elements of an enduring customer vendor relationship and that technical innovation is only useful if it has proven itself in a true customer manufacturing environment.”

To provide this type of environment, the customer support center will house a customer training facility, machine demo rooms for surfacing technology and a clean room environment for AR and hard coating equipment. Additionally, a full selection of surfacing and AR consumables as well as machines, parts and accessories will be on hand. Customers will have access to personalized service support, 24-hours a day though OptoTech’s on-line service support system.

Roland Mandler, CEO of OptoTech added, “The use of OptoTech machines and process technologies gives our customers an economically valuable competitive edge and sets the stage for a more efficient production of optical components. With our new Germantown facility and the additional support functions we are now one step closer to supporting our existing North American customer base and gaining new customers in the process. We are proud of our OptoTech Team.”

OptoTech offers a comprehensive product range worldwide for all production areas, from supermicro, micro, and macro to plano-optics and ophthalmic lenses. The company provides complete production lines, from generating to edging/centering, polishing and measuring. The company manufactures its equipment in Wettenberg and Jena, Germany, Etziken, Switzerland and Milan, Italy. Additional customer support facilities are located in Hong Kong, India, France and the U.S.

akarp@jobson.com