NEW YORK—The optical lab business, at its most elemental, has always been a numbers game. Running a lab, though, is a complex undertaking that involves more than simply dollars and cents. It also about the number of prescription jobs per day it can produce, and the percentage of those jobs that are rejected because they don’t meet quality control standards. It’s about maintaining a job average that’s calculated based upon production yields and the average price per job. It’s about the cost of capital equipment, consumables, overhead, labor and dozens of other budget line items. Today those costs are escalating, as anyone who runs a lab or plans to start one, will confirm. Labs are, out of necessity, taking a critical look at the investments they are making in facilities as well as in human resources. VM spoke to nine leading lab owners and operators about their own investment decisions, and how new technology has and/or will change the way they process lenses. Read More