Who is the company

Virtudent offers teledentistry services and on-site preventive dental care to their partner organizations. In their own words, “Virtudent makes the dental experience vastly more accessible, convenient, transparent and most importantly—all about the patient.”

What is the product

The mobile dentistry kit contains everything the hygienists and dentists need to check and clean the patients teeth. The unit, when unpacked, has a full sized patient chair, hygienists chair, x-ray camera, water/suction system, and all other tools necessary to complete a regular dental check up or teeth cleaning procedure. When packed for transport, the unit has the foot-print of a shopping cart and has about the same mobility!

Who is the CEO contact

John Voith

What was the problem they were trying to solve

Virtudent wanted to enable hygienists to visit partner companies that provided dental insurance to their employees. By bringing the dental care to their partners’ offices, the employees of these organizations could get the dental care they needed without the time penalty associated with travelling to a dedicated dental practice. This would save both the employees and the employers time and money by providing proactive preventative care that if left unattended, could develop into a far costlier and more serious dental condition.

Why did they approach MACABItech

MACABItech was contracted to triple the number of mobile dentistry kits in Virtudent’s possession to facilitate their rapid nationwide expansion.To successfully deliver this project, MACABItech provided the following services:

1. Optimizing the existing design for large scale, low cost production
2. Sourcing of all fabricated components and associated supply chain management
3. Asset tracking and inventory management including storage, logistics, and processing
4. Establishing and creating the assembly area with a focus on the 5S & lean manufacturing
5. Employee training and project management of Virtudent’s mechanical engineering team
6. Field repair and defect management of Virtudent’s pre-existing field equipment
7. Upgrade of existing mobile kits to current design philosophy

What was the process used to develop a successful solution

1. A top down review of the existing design was conducted with a focus on low-cost Design for Manufacturing and Assembly.
2. A user study was conducted to collate feedback on the previous design, including common issues, failures, and successes of the existing system.
3. A robust Product Design Specification was used to track and monitor the design key deliverables.
4. A digital twin of the existing design was created based on a record of all previous design history.
5. To redesign the system, MACABItech utilised a number of novel, forward thinking concept development strategies culminating in the creation of several prototypes. Various changes to individual subsystems were tested with a focus on reliability, safety, regulatory compliance, user friendliness, and manufacturing efficiency.
6. Communication channels were established with key manufacturers to establish valuable design feedback to optimize the design and reduce the overall cost associated with manufacturing.
7. Planning, executing and managing the prototype manufacturing was significantly less costly and complicated due to the preparatory work. Multiple vendors were identified for each process to minimize bottlenecks and allow a spectrum of choice for the upcoming production run.
8. An in depth test regime was established to determine if the system could meet or exceed a variety of client and regulatory metrics. This extended to static and dynamic load testing of various components, field testing and use case studies.
9. Production management: Creating the processes to keep track of production, including supply chain tracking, inventory management, quality management systems, and facility set-up.

What happened after delivering the project

The new and upgraded kits were successfully deployed to support the expansion of Virtudent across the United States. Based on the timely completion of the project and MACABItech’s ability to deliver 50 teledentistry systems, a new contract was agreed upon to upgrade existing dentistry systems inline with the new 4.0 standard.

In conjunction with nation-wide kit deployment, Virtudent also contracted MACABItech to completely reverse engineer their proprietary water suction unit. This facilitated MACABItech’s creation of a training regime for new engineers to assemble and test the systems before releasing them into the dental kits.