History

Scott Mappin began his dental lab career at age 15 in his father's laboratory. He left the Pittsburgh area in 1990 and traveled down his own path in the field of dental technology. He went to Vermont to take a position as a ceramist at Champlain Dental Laboratory in South Burlington and became the laboratories trainer in little more than a year. Two years later he was offered a position in Wiesbaden, Germany that was disappointingly shut down by the German Consulate due to Germany's protection of employment opportunities for German citizens. That bump in the road was the catalyst that led to his decision to start his own dental laboratory which he operated in Vermont for 13 years. During that time, he was also a trainer for the Vermont Dental Assistants Association and his lab was one of only two labs in the region to be a member of the New England Academy of Cosmetic Dentists.

In 2006, Scott decided to take a position as a trainer in H&O Dental Lab, one of National Dentex Laboratories' largest labs with 125 employees. While in this position, he was in charge of training technicians in all phases of the laboratory - testing incoming recruits; writing training documents and SOPs; and testing established employees on a continuous basis to maintain quality and knowledge standards in the laboratory.

During this time, Brontes Technology requested that H&O be a Beta test site for a new intraoral digital scanner called the LAVA COS. Using this technology for the very first time, Scott knew he needed to evolve out of the analog dental lab and into this new digital frontier of dentistry.

Four months after seeing the intraoral digital scanner and while attending the 2008 Chicago Midwinter Dental show, Scott approached the exhibitors at the 3M booth with his resume. He had an on-the-spot interview with the lead trainer who happened to be in attendance which led to his being hired by 3M three months later.

Scott moved to Lexington, Massachusetts where he trained for 6 weeks on the COS in order to be able to teach dentists, dental assistants, and office staff how to integrate the COS into their practices. Brontes/3M soon named him COS trainer for the Pacific Northwest and relocated him to Seattle, Washington where he successfully fulfilled that role by traveling to 100 trainings in 104 weeks. His travels took him from Fairbanks, Alaska to Munich, Germany and also to Paris where he was the only American to help launch the COS at the largest dental show in France. He also interviewed for and was offered the position of Training Manager of Europe but decided to forego that opportunity for another one back in the States.

Scott's next career move was to Issaquah Dental Laboratory (IDL) where he was positioned as the lab's Intraoral Scanning Manager, Quality Control Manager, and Technical Trainer. At the time, Issaquah was the largest LAVA products milling center in the U.S. and second largest in the world. This was the next step in his education around milling processes, digital workflows, and other related digitally born restoration aspects in dental technology.

In eight months with IDL, he reduced internal and external remakes of the lab by $220,000 and brought in $100,000+ in new business. He also became the only person known to have completed the iTerro training for trainers and was certified to train dentists on either the iTerro and COS. These specialized skills allowed IDL to send Scott into any dental office struggling with their digital scanning process and subsequently capture much of the local business.

In 2011, Scott decided to return home to Pittsburgh accepting a position as Assistant General Manager and IOS Director at Albensi Laboratories. Five months later, he took a position at Atlantic Precious Metals Refining. It was during his time at APMR that the concept of Strategy Milling was born.

In 2012, Scott traveled to the Chicago Midwinter Dental show to research all of the available mills that were there. Through this process he narrowed the choices down to three different brands. Meetings were held with each vendor and eventually Roeders of America was chosen as the best mill for the project and Strategy Milling® was launched.

During the planning stages and mill setup, Scott developed the complex manufacturing process that led to the creation of consistent puck inventory beginning with taking raw elements to create the alloy and the end result having a dimensionally accurate and consistent alloy puck to mill. All of the machinery that was purchased needed to be researched and tested. Scott had never used these machines before but with the help of a few manufacturing experts, he was taught how to use the equipment and furthermore taught himself the detail of the manufacturing process. He also needed to design and oversee the manufacturing of custom machinery to achieve the end result in the process room. In place now is a proprietary, custom process that consistently produces a millable product.

Eighteen months later, Strategy found itself in a newly remodeled 6,000 sq. ft. secure facility with three Roeders RDX5 Mills paired with three RCS-1 Automation Magazines and room to expand to as many as 12 or more milling systems. Also onsite is a puck processing facility. All of the accompanying systems such as purified air, ample power, and a backup generator are either in place or have planned expansion capabilities in place. Scott oversaw the design of a new kitchen, restrooms, and office space for a minimum of 5 additional employees to perform the tasks of administration, and "nesting" of incoming files which is also ready.

Today Scott along with his father Don Sr., Dana, Brad, and Lisa are currently operating the milling center.