Optimal Optics with Odoo

Large telescopes, virtual reality headsets, heads-up car displays, and camera systems are all modern technologies that intrigue the masses but whose mechanics allude most. At the very least, most individuals understand that such devices are extremely complex and uniquely designed. An important component of these technologies is the optics that make the user’s experience engaging, visually appealing, and informative. A computer program designs an optical system; then once it’s made and aligned, there are two things that determine if the optical system will work: firstly, whether all of the lenses and mirrors are made correctly with the right shapes, and secondly, whether or not the pieces can be put together and aligned to one another. 

Arizona Optical Metrology, based in Tucson, Arizona, creates holograms to test both parts of this process. The optical engineering company specializes in making test equipment its customers use to measure the complex optical surfaces and systems of intricate devices such as telescopes and VR headsets. This testing equipment takes the form of computer-generated holograms (CGH).

Arizona Optical Metrology arose from the minds of two professors at the University of Arizona, Chun-yu Zhao and Jim Burge, who were heading a project to make a big aspheric mirror and needed a hologram to test it. The one guy at the time who was making these holograms in the United States had a lead time of close to 6-8 months– much too long for the pair’s project schedule. Chun-yu took the initiative to write the software for the hologram they needed himself, and was successful! After it worked so well for their project, Chun-yu realized that there were probably others who needed similar holograms at shorter lead times and began a business on the side, with Jim as an advisor, in 2009. For 11 years, the business ran as essentially a one-man show from the corner of Chun-yu’s bedroom until, in 2020, Jim retired from the university and wanted to become more involved. The duo got an official office space, hired three employees, including Jake Beverage, and has grown rapidly ever since. Now, four years later, the company has 18 people and has expanded into a second office in New York. 

Arizona Optical Metrology’s growing success and product line required a robust and comprehensive business solution to help manage its operations– this is where Odoo comes in.

Before the company expanded in 2020, Chun-yu ran the business as a solo operation and managed it on a very small scale– he took orders, processed orders, did all the design work, and shipped out finished products all on his own. He used Excel spreadsheets to keep track of sales and orders and used other Microsoft Office programs such as Word for documentation. Since Chun-yu ran the business on the side, he didn’t actively go out and sell the product; instead, most business came through word of mouth in the very small optics community. Anyone who needed his product knew where to find him. Therefore, keeping track of customers and orders through Excel was manageable. 

When he was a one-man team, Chun-yu didn’t have to worry about communication and information sharing between employees. Issues only began to arise once he scaled the business and hired more employees who needed to interact with the same information, such as customer data, orders, and inventory. Excel simply wasn’t cut out to have multiple people working within the application. Arizona Optical Metrology turned to SharePoint as a temporary solution for collaboration within Microsoft Suite applications. However, Jake Beverage, Chief Operations Officer at the company, explains how that system still couldn’t keep up with their growth– especially when it came to inventory and manufacturing:

We really need to know what our current inventory level is. Not just our stock valuation, but how many of each part we have if we get an order in or if we get an order for multiple units in– can we fulfill those orders? Before we really scaled the business up, it didn’t really matter because we were doing one at a time, and they were pretty much all in series. And so [when] we would get an order, we’d say, ‘Oh, we need to build this.’ If we didn’t have the parts, we had time to buy them; we could buy them in smallish quantities, and it wasn’t that big of a deal. Now, we need to buy stuff proactively to meet a forecast that’s future-looking because one of the key differentiators for the success of our business is our lead time. Our stuff is expensive, and it’s very unique, and it requires a custom design, and there are a few other companies in the world that do it - not very many - but what they don’t do t​hat we do is we deliver very quickly. Our typical lead time for a job is eight weeks, and that includes custom design and manufacturing. We can do it in as fast as four weeks. Our competitors are in the three to four months [range] as a standard lead time. So we weren’t able to very efficiently use tools like Excel to scale to that level of manufacturing planning.

With increasing demand for Arizona Optical Metrology’s products, Excel simply couldn’t keep up with the company’s growth and changing needs. At this point, the company realized they had to turn to a new business software for a solution.

When it came time to decide on which new business software to choose, Arizona Optical Metrology carefully researched options before deciding on Odoo. As Jake explains, the final decision ultimately came down to the value proposition that each option offered. At the time they were searching, the company was smaller than they are now, and the move from a Microsoft Office-based system to a comprehensive ERP was a daunting task. Their business expenses were already piling up as they grew rapidly, so they were especially price-conscious, prioritizing the total value of a new system above all else. In addition to pricing, Jake emphasizes that the integrated nature of Odoo was also a huge factor:

The other part of the value proposition is the efficiency. It’s really appealing that in Odoo, we could have a solution for our CRM and our sales and commercial of the business, and the operation side of the business with manufacturing and inventory and the accounting, purchasing - it’s all integrated, and the visibility for the sales team to be able to go in and see what the master production schedule says and, ‘When am I going to have parts?’ For us, as a small team where everybody is wearing 53 hats, the efficiency of that was really, really appealing.

With business booming, Jake explains that Arizona Optical Metrology is finding that it has more and more concurrent orders coming in. One of the biggest impacts that Odoo has had during this recent phase of business growth has been the ability to manage all of the orders at once:

Because our products are custom, each of our customers comes to us with a specific optic that they need to measure. That means we have to do a custom design each time. As you can imagine, there’s some back and forth with the customer, so even before we get an order, there’s a preliminary design phase where we are doing work on our side before we can give a quote to the customer. Then we have to wait to see if they decide to order, then we go forward with order fulfillment, final design, and the manufacturing part of that. If you take any one of those by itself, it’s a pretty straightforward process– it goes pretty smoothly, it’s pretty optimized. If now we’ve got 20 of those that are all running concurrently, it becomes a real challenge. And so that’s where using Odoo in the day-to-day sense has had the biggest impact– the ability to manage multiple concurrent opportunities, in all parts of the sales pipeline. So, at any given time, we probably have 20 active opportunities. They’re at different points of that order cycle, from initial engagement and preliminary design all the way to the final assembly, test, and shipping of the part. The whole cycle of an order might only be 10 weeks for us. It’s often a lot faster, so managing all of those different phases with only a handful of people would be impossible without the visibility that Odoo’s created.”

In addition to managing orders, Jake says that the Dashboards application has been extremely helpful for the company, with the ability to look ahead with forecasting. Up until Odoo, they were only really able to look back at previous information. The ability to forecast has been extremely helpful for the business’s inventory and overall management.

From a project at the University of Arizona that demanded a creative solution to an increasingly successful company with two offices, Arizona Optical Metrology has lived through the various stages of a growing business. With these stages have come unique challenges that any business faces, including outgrowing an old system and having to switch to a new one. Thankfully, Odoo came in at an opportune time, helping the company manage growth and its ever-changing business needs. As Arizona Optical Metrology continues to take the optics field by storm, Odoo is prepared to support its needs every step of the way.