Driving Dentistry Forward Podcast - Episode 10 - Greg Minzenmayer

Chuck Cohen interviews one of Incisal Edge's 32 Most influential People in Dentistry, Greg Minzenmayer, Chief Operating Officer at Glidewell Dental FOR FIVE DECADES, Glidewell Laboratories has been the leading provider of dental lab products and professional services. With its founder, Jim Glidewell, at the helm, it has innovated in every aspect of dentistry—specializing in crowns and bridges, ceramics, implants, prosthetics and more, becoming the largest privately held dental laboratory on earth. Glidewell, 75, is a titanic industry figure, and still the company’s CEO. But no triumph is ever fully secured alone, and COO Minzenmayer, Glidewell’s trusted aide-de-camp, has been second in command to the master for nearly 15 years. He joined the company in 2006 as director of implant business development, bringing more than a decade of industry experience with him. He became COO in 2010 and is responsible for Glidewell Labs’ daily operations and system improvements. His focus, Minzenmayer says, is on “efficiency and quality. We not only operate a large dental lab; we also manufacture zirconia, glass ceramics, composite resins, implants, mills, cutting tools, bench-top lab scanners, industrial-grade CT scanners and our own CAD/CAM software. This allows us to meet the changing demands of a dynamic market.” Minzenmayer managed the 2010 launch of Glidewell’s popular BruxZir solid zirconia crowns and recently unveiled the Zeramex XT, a two-piece metal-free ceramic implant that provides highly lifelike esthetics for anterior and thin tissues. He notes that Glidewell had planned to launch a digital, fully automated BruxZir crown-milling center by mid-2020—an innovation that would use artificial intelligence to reduce errors. Like so much else, that timetable is now very much in corona-flux. Still, Minzenmayer is bullish on Glidewell’s future. “Thanks to a visionary CEO, an incredibly talented group of CDTs, engineers, research scientists, software developers, dentists and manufacturers,” he exults, “I have the most fun job in dentistry.”