Video

Mass Customization for Everyday Transformations

Align Technology is the world's largest user of 3D printing, manufacturing more than 500,000 Invisalign aligners every day on a sophisticated production line that combines additive manufacturing, advanced automation, and artificial intelligence. Align CEO Joe Hogan explains how the company's investment in digital manufacturing is delivering customized products on a massive scale and driving efficient, highly profitable operations.
Joseph Hogan
Align Technology
In a normal business...you'd move your inventory maybe 12 times a year. If you were starved you could move your inventory 16 times a year. We turn our inventory 65 times a year. There's no finished goods—none. The first time I went to [our plant in] Juarez, I said, 'show me the warehouse,' because that's usually where the money is. And they said, 'you're in it, Joe!' It was no bigger than this backstage area: photopolymer, some plastic used to vacuum form, different parts and equipment for discrete factory automation. That's it. It's an incredible cash machine in that way. Most of your businesses, if you set them up that way, you'll enjoy really good cash flow.

Joseph M. Hogan joined Align in June 2015 as President, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), and a Director of Align Technology. Mr. Hogan is an accomplished chief executive with extensive experience across multiple industries including healthcare, technology and industrial automation. Before joining Align, Mr. Hogan served as CEO of ABB, a $40 billion global power and automation technologies company based in Zurich, Switzerland. During his five years at ABB, Mr. Hogan oversaw a 25% increase in revenues. Prior to ABB, Mr. Hogan spent 25 years at General Electric (GE) in a variety of executive and management roles, including eight years as CEO of GE Healthcare, where he drove significant geographic and market portfolio expansion and more than doubled revenues from $7 billion to $16 billion. Mr. Hogan earned an M.B.A. from Robert Morris University and a B.S. degree in Business and Economics from Geneva College, both in Pennsylvania.

For more on Align's use of 3D printing, listen to Jon Bruner's interview with Emory Wright, Align's Senior Vice President for Global Operations, on the Digital Factory Podcast.

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The future of manufacturing is digital. We explore the technologies that are transforming fabrication, from advanced 3D printing to AI-assisted design, and get to know the leaders who are bringing them to the factory floor.

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