Products & ideas for the laboratory professional.
Issue link: https://opticallabproducts.epubxp.com/i/472711
opticallabproducts.com march 2015 7 ONE-TO-ONE OPINIONS CAROL: IS THERE ROOM FOR FURTHER GROWTH? MERVYN: If you look at the industry right now, the traditional progressive lens still represents about 80%. Free-form is only about 20% of the market. What's going to happen over the next few years is that fgure is going to swing. And I think the change in technology is starting to gain momentum and start to move much, much faster toward free-form. I don't know how many years it will take, but the 80/20 ratio is going to reverse. Most laboratories are going to want to get into free-form. If they don't already have the technology, they're going to want to get it. It will be a feld day for the machine suppliers over the next few years. CAROL: ARE THE ORIGINAL PEOPLE INVOLVED IN THE MBO STILL WITH THE COMPANY? MERVYN: I'm the last man standing! They've all retired. CAROL: WHAT'S BASED IN NORTHERN IRELAND? MERVYN: We have a 20,000-sq.- ft. facility there. We employ 30 people in Lurgan, County Armagh. Some people from the original days are still employed by us. We've got a team of about eight R&D; guys who are working constantly on new designs and developing software and servicing our customers. The rest of our staff is involved in manufacturing glass molds because we're still doing that. CAROL: WHAT NEW TECH- NOLOGY IS UNDER DEVELOP- MENT? MERVYN: Design on Demand is a digital design software package that will be available in the second quarter. All wholesale laboratories have the option to purchase this package based on the specifc designs they request. We've applied for a patent for it and it's effectively going to allow an optician to design a progressive lens specifcally for a patient in their practice. We will have a link from the ECP's offce directly to any lab running our software. The ECP will be able to download the design directly to the laboratory and give them the machining fles to allow them to manufacture a personalized lens. We work with all lab management systems (LMS). CAROL: WILL YOU NEED TO TRAIN ECPS TO LEARN HOW TO USE DESIGN ON DEMAND? MERVYN: There will be some training. We're making the interface as intuitive as possible. It should be easy to implement and to operate. That's a key competency for both Crossbows and Kodak. CAROL: WILL DESIGN ON DEMAND HAVE VARIOUS OCCUPATIONAL DESIGNS? MERVYN: We already have a range of occupational designs, such as offce, driver's, kids', relax, etc. One of the beauties for people working with Crossbows is that we're an exceptionally responsive organization. We do things very quickly. If people have ideas about a specifc type of lens they would like, no matter how crazy it is, we can probably design it for them. We've done specifc designs for a number of our customers. CAROL: WHAT DESIGN PARAMETERS ARE UNIQUE TO CROSSBOWS? MERVYN: We have a patented system which we call Smooth Mean Power which creates a very, very smooth surface. We said we're not going to look at cylinder but we're going to look at mean power because it's much, much closer to what the eye actually sees. So we designed the system to create a very smooth mean power. If you go down vertically through the lens or if you look horizontally through the lens, the transition is incredibly smooth. What that does is it helps with patient adaptation and it minimizes swim effect. CAROL: IS YOUR SOFTWARE EMBEDDED IN AN LMS OR INTERNET-ACCESSIBLE? MERVYN: With our free-form software, we have the capability to do both. Many of our installations throughout the world are local installations so we send the software to the laboratory and we send them a security device which goes into the USB port on their computer. Theoretically the software is not supposed to work without the security device, or vice versa. We also have the capability through Signet in California to provide a server-based system as well. CAROL: WILL ECPS LICENSE OR BUY DESIGN ON DE- MAND? MERVYN: It's something we're working on. Crossbows staff celebrates with Hugh McLoughlin who received Essilor's President's Choice award in 2014 for his outstanding contribution to the company. He retired shortly thereafter. The Crossbows factory in Lurgan, Northern Ireland.