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The company

Optos PLC is a Dunfermline-based company which designs, develops and manufactures ultra-widefield retinal imaging devices. 

Their most regularly manufactured product is their Daytona machine, which produces high-resolution digital retina scans. Around 99% of these machines are exported to the US, Japan, China and Korea. 

Their approach

Sarah Jardine, director of manufacturing for Optos, said, “Manufacturing used to be like our dirty little secret…then we realised it was really special."

As a result, Optos has invested time into making the improvement of manufacturing processes and culture important throughout the organisation, and has cost-avoided millions in the process of doing so.

Sarah believes that providing people with the space to have ideas and make improvements has been the most important shift.

She said, “You can teach the ideas behind Lean all you want, but you have to give people the freedom and the tools to really do it."

Part of the success at Optos is down to the consistency of the time they set aside to work on improvements and come up with new ideas. There are 50 people involved, so that is 100 hours per week spent on finding new improvements throughout the business. Investing time in training sessions and workshops is also a huge part of this.

"It is sometimes tempting, especially when we are busy with orders, to let it slip - but we know how important it is to make sure we keep it going,” Sarah said.

Optos see a need to change Scottish business culture to one that facilitates, celebrates and recognises improvements rather than imposing them. They have successfully changed their mindset behind manufacturing processes and are developing a culture that their team can be proud of.

How SMAS have helped

SMAS are currently supporting Optos through the deployment of six sigma tools and techniques, which help reduce variation and embed problem solving in a structured way. This specific project has delivered £412,000 of gross value added (GVA) for the business over three years.

The Optos team also supported a Scottish Manufacturing Learning Journey for 15 manufacturing leaders in November 2014, and, in addition, two of the Optos CI leaders recently attended a learning journey to Toyota in Derby. 

Get support from SMAS

If you would like to improve your manufacturing practices, you can request a SMAS manufacturing review to help you identify challenges and opportunities in your business and develop an action plan to help address them.

Get a manufacturing review