DALLAS—Satisloh asserted its position as a leading supplier of ophthalmic lens processing technology by unveiling a highly automated prescription lab last month featuring 34 new technologies.

The debut of the new lab, located here on the corporate campus of parent company Essilor of America, was the highlight of the ninth SLUGfest, a technical conference hosted by Satisloh, the name of which is based on an acronym for Satisloh Users Group. The conference, held from Nov. 10 to 13, drew 200 lab executives from over 20 countries. They represented a wide range of prescription labs, from single location operations to large lab networks with multiple facilities.

Attendees toured the new lab, where they witnessed equipment demonstrations by Satisloh technical experts and participated in seminars. Also on hand were representatives from several vendors including MEI System and A&R Optical Machinery, whose equipment is integrated into the lab.

The design of the new lab, which Satisloh named “Lab 4.0: the Lab of the Future,” is based on a continuous improvement program called Lab 4.0 that is intended to streamline Rx lens production and make the manufacturing process much more efficient.

“Our goal was to get rid of batches and piles of trays, to make it look not busy,” said Larry Clarke, CEO of Satisloh. Clarke said that the lab has the capacity to produce 2,500 Rx jobs per day with only 10 full time employees working two shifts a day.

Lab 4.0 involves several elements: a new generation of equipment consisting of smart machines with remote monitoring and diagnostics; a comprehensive support program including preventative maintenance; intelligent automation, which uses paperless job tracking and a GPS real-time location system and an Intelligent Smart Conveyor with fast tracking and collaborative robots.

All components of the lab’s production process are interconnected using two approaches: MES-360 (Manufacturing Execution System) that uses real-time machine monitoring, conveyor routing, real-time breakage monitoring and coating batch tracking, and MOM-360, (Manufacturing Operations Management), which offers proactive scheduling, proactive quality control with statistical process control, a quality control system with automated optical inspection and manual cosmetic inspection stations and front curve measurement and recalculation.

Labs that implement these four elements can achieve up to 30 percent faster production throughput, gain up to 25 percent in efficiency, use far less labor and become more environmentally friendly, according to Satisloh executives. Many attendees said they were impressed by the new technologies and Satisloh’s overall approach to lens making.

“I like the overall direction in presenting this as an IoT (Internet of Things) platform, which I think is where we need to head as an industry,” said SLUGfest attendee Robert Niemiec, senior vice president, engineering and technology, HVHC, Inc.

“As we all come from different places in terms of having different kinds of equipment and different levels of technology, one challenge is going to be to sort out which of these technologies make the most sense and develop a plan as to how to best incorporate them in the context of an overall IoT direction,” Niemiec said.