Digitalisation Generates Success for Reipurth Dental

Five years ago Reipurth Dental in Brøndby, Denmark, launched a digitalisation drive. The company‘s recent purchase of dental mills has increased its productivity significantly while also improving quality.

Jakob Reipurth has always had the ambition of being self-employed. Many members of his immediate family are trained dental professionals, and as such it was a natural path for him to go down.

In 2007 Jakob Reipurth graduated as a dental technician, and since 2009 he has run his own laboratory based in Brøndby, Denmark. Today the company has 10 employees, of which eight are dental technicians.

In 2012 Jakob Reipurth took his first steps towards digitalising the company’s production. ”Before that we did everything by hand, but I can see that our output only became really efficient once we took the decision to go down the CAD/CAM route,” says the company’s owner.

Improved efficiency

The company’s first purchases were a CAD/CAM scanner and a dental mill. This had a positive impact on day-to-day operations, with the laboratory suddenly being able to turn out 30 units a day, compared with just 5 before the expansion. In step with Reipurth Dental’s expansion of production, the company’s machinery has also been upgraded.

One year ago Jakob Reipurth purchased a dry dental mill and a wet dental mill manufactured by Roland DG, which further expanded production at the company’s Brøndby facility. Prior to placing the order Jakob Reipurth spent a long time researching the market.

”I looked at all of the dental mills in this price range, but it was Roland’s equipment which got the best reviews, and the fact that it is an open system was certainly also a factor in choosing their products,” he explains.

Other dental mills required the purchase of the manufacturer’s software, while Roland DG’s allows one to choose one’s preferred software.
”I like the fact that they specialise in producing machines while allowing others to develop the most suitable software. This gives me more of a free hand to make my own decisions,” says Jakob Reipurth.

High demand

The 36-year-old proprietor is making a big effort to spread the word about the company’s products, and demand has kept pace with its increased production efficiency. 

”With the equipment we have now we are able to deliver within 48 hours throughout the entire Greater Copenhagen area. By contrast a patient would typically have to wait 10 to 14 days for a prosthesis manufactured in China,” explains Jakob Reipurth.

He has observed a market trend whereby an increasing number of Danish patients are choosing dental technology manufactured in Denmark, and he considers the digitalisation of production to be the decisive factor in this development.

”We finally have machinery which allows us to compete in terms of timescale and price,” he says.

The machinery itself is also extremely precise, which helps facilitate the subsequent dental treatment, since as a rule a crown manufactured by Reipurth slides effortlessly into place. According to Jakob Reipurth it is the new dental mills which have brought about the improvement in quality. The equipment is supplied with tools in three sizes, guaranteeing a beautiful, precise result every time.

”This investment has meant that we have been able to upscale production. We not only achieve a faster output, but also a more precise one. The benefit of the investment for the patient is shortened waiting times at the dentist, precisely because we are able to produce morphological crowns to a high standard which are a perfect fit,” says Jakob Reipurth.

By Jon Holm-Pedersen

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