When you’re choosing a dental laboratory, something to consider is the size of the operation. The size of a dental laboratory impacts virtually every aspect of your experience, including services offered, overall quality, consistency, speed and price.

Your knee-jerk reaction might be that smaller is better, with the notion that small labs offer more personalized, hands-on care for the dentist. Historically, that’s often been true. But technology is the great equalizer; and, today, larger labs can invest in and implement digital tools that provide services, quality, convenience and a customer experience that small labs simply cannot.

As the world’s largest dental laboratory, Glidewell has facilities, systems and capabilities that are second to none — all aimed at making your everyday care-providing experience better, simpler, faster and more affordable.

Keep reading to learn how Glidewell’s peerless scale benefits you.

If you’ve never visited the Glidewell campus, you might have a hard time picturing the sheer scale of the company. While much of the lab industry is made up of “mom-and-pop” small businesses, Glidewell exists in a class of its own. Its main campus occupies more than 30 acres in the heart of Orange County, California, with over 1,000,000 square feet of facilities — making it the largest dental lab in the world. Every inch of this space is dedicated to serving dentists.

Glidewell works with more than 80,000 dentists on over 5 million cases each year. We use proprietary systems to make sure you’ll never feel lost in the crowd, but always as a true priority — more on how Glidewell improves your experience in the Enhanced Customer Support section below. Despite the scale of the dental laboratory portion of the business, production makes up just one of the company’s many divisions.  

On our Southern California campus, we also have a world-class Research & Development department, made up of more than 150 individuals, including Ph.D.-credentialed researchers, chemists, engineers, computer scientists, dental technicians and clinicians. These experts play a role in shaping the future of dental technology, working tirelessly to find solutions that simplify treatment, optimize results and reduce costs for practitioners, labs and patients alike. To ensure tomorrow’s methods and materials are superior to those available today, Glidewell reinvests roughly 15 cents of every dollar earned into research & development.

Additionally, the campus has a manufacturing division with CGMP-regulated and ISO-certified facilities, where we create implants, prosthetic components, in-office milling machines, restorative materials, burs and other tools, and much more. By bringing these manufacturing capabilities in-house, Glidewell maintains complete control over the outcome — leading to higher-quality, tailor-made products and reducing the risk of service disruptions. Plus, this philosophy eliminates the price markups caused by middlemen, and Glidewell is proud to pass those savings on to its customers.

Today, the company employs roughly 5,000 people, with most working directly in the dental lab, manufacturing centers or R&D. Still, you may be surprised to find that Glidewell has many other dedicated facilities aimed at supporting the production staff — and the dentist in turn — including onsite dental operatories, education centers, a woodshop, an auto garage, a health clinic, a gym and multiple restaurants, each with dedicated teams of their own. Plus, the company has hundreds of office employees in customer service, IT and marketing who focus on connecting with and supporting dentists across the U.S.

In the dental industry, Glidewell’s facilities and capabilities are without equal. Ultimately, its scope and size are designed to benefit dentists in as many ways as possible, to better the experience of the everyday practitioner.

While dentists have many full-service labs to choose from, Glidewell takes “full-service” to a completely new level. Not only can dentists partner with Glidewell for the expected lab services — such as crowns & bridges, provisionals, dentures, implant restorations, sleep devices, orthodontic aligners and preventive appliances — but also for virtually everything else involved in providing care. Glidewell offers instrumentation, clinical supplies and consumables, biologics, digital equipment, in-office technologies, and the education needed to strengthen skills and build confidence. Visit glidewelldirect.com for more information.

When it comes to everyday lab services, Glidewell provides dentists an unmatched level of control. For example, if a dentist is looking to prescribe a crown, at Glidewell the choices aren’t limited to material selection, shade and form. For our most popular services, dentists have extra ways to ensure that the outcome is exactly what’s desired. Practitioners can choose:

• Service Speed: Whether needed today (BruxZir^® NOW), tomorrow (Next-Day BruxZir) or a few days from now (BruxZir Zirconia), Glidewell has developed workflows to deliver crowns & bridges to your practice in record time, with no loss in quality. The standard for in-lab BruxZir cases is just 3 days.
• Chairside vs. In-Lab: Our leading crown & bridge materials can be created in your office or at the lab, with both workflows benefiting from Glidewell’s CrownAI^™ intuitive design system.
• Design Involvement Level: You can choose how involved you want to be in your case’s ultimate design. You can rely fully on the lab, with our AI-powered design system generating a perfect crown for your case, or get hands-on, utilizing our Glidewell Signature^™ portal to collaborate directly on your case.

Not every lab service at Glidewell today includes these options; however, we’re actively working to extend these systems to areas that can benefit dentists the most. Ultimately, these services are only possible due to the size of the company, because Glidewell can reinvest dollars earned into advancing our systems at a rate and scale that no other lab can match.

The size of the company means that Glidewell can control virtually all phases of production. As an example, think of an implant restoration. Not only does Glidewell make the restoration itself, but the company also makes the implant, the implant abutment, the prosthetic screw, the milling blank from which the crown is made, and even many of the manufacturing machines and software used across the various phases of the production. This amounts to a greater degree of control and precision at virtually every step, which leads to better results for the dentist. Plus, this encompassing workflow guarantees compatibility between all distinct components — no more having to source parts and pieces from multiple vendors just to complete your case.

You won’t find a lab anywhere that has more technical experience than Glidewell. With a 50+ year history and thousands of employees, the amount of time spent hands-on with cases is practically immeasurable. Simply, there’s unlikely a challenge in restorative dentistry that we haven’t seen and solved before. As we continue to implement digital tools into our workflows, we’ve taken care to involve our most seasoned technicians every step of the way — ensuring that their honed knowledge is never lost and can positively influence the success of your cases for years to come.

As the company has grown, Glidewell has made sure to garner experience in many areas beyond the lab. We’ve hired experts in manufacturing, engineering, software, robotics, materials development and artificial intelligence — a collection of expertise which we use to improve services in the lab and beyond. These professionals have brought centuries of collective knowledge to the company and are now focused on applying their skills to dentistry to devise and build new solutions for you.

Another benefit of the scale of Glidewell is there’s minimal risk of your cases being delayed due to a lab interruption. If a technician is out, a machine or production floor shuts down, or even an entire building becomes unusable, there are countless backup and overflow systems that guarantee your case never stops moving. Plus, the company has round-the-clock shifts of technicians (or, in some cases, robots) so that production is “always on” — the lights are never off at Glidewell.

One more benefit of having such large facilities and capabilities is that Glidewell can respond to the needs of dentists today while also preparing itself for the industry’s future needs. This forward-thinking posture means that clinicians who count on Glidewell today can continue to rely on Glidewell for years to come.

When many think of Glidewell today, they only envision a giant dental laboratory. But the reality is that a significant portion of our business is supporting dentists in non-laboratory capacities, whether through in-office technologies or world-class education. What Glidewell is today is a direct result of our “constant change” philosophy — the belief that to succeed one must always adapt, because challenges and opportunities are never static.

The direction of how Glidewell evolves is primarily informed by what we hear from dentists. For example, dentists wanted more reliable and more affordable in-office technologies that didn’t require technician-like expertise. So, that’s why we launched the glidewell.io™ In-Office Solution. Then, some dentists were telling us that they were having trouble staying up to date amidst the proliferation of restorative materials, techniques and technologies — that’s why we built world-class education facilities and offer practical, hands-on courses on a wide array of topics.

The size of our operation enables Glidewell to answer the needs of dentists today, but always with an eye toward tomorrow.

At Glidewell, our mission is to increase patient access to quality dentistry. We strive to achieve this by using relentless innovation to support dentists in their delivery of care. After all, when the dentist succeeds, the lab and patients benefit as well. This principle guides everything we do on the Glidewell campus. It’s why we’ve refined both cutting-edge innovations and time-tested traditions to create the world’s largest dental lab.

You’re always welcome to come visit our campus in Orange County, California. There are countless “wow” moments to be had. Plus, touring the campus allows you to put a face to the technicians and lab personnel who work with you every week.

You’ll have an opportunity to see:

• Glidewell’s production lab
• Automated and robot-enhanced workflows
• Implant, prosthetic component and milling blank manufacturing
• glidewell.io mill assembly
• Research & development facilities
• Clinical testing operatories
• And so much more …

Schedule your tour here: glidewell.com/tour