Ross Optical Blog: The Latest News & Research

Minimizing supply chain risk is an important priority for companies that source optical components. Tight timelines and cost pressures mean that businesses can’t afford mistakes or missing parts. There are several ways to reduce your optical supply chain risk and ensure continued availability of optical components.

Thanks to our network of 21 optical manufacturing partners around the world, Ross Optical stocks a wide variety of standard and hard-to-find optics, including aspheres and micro lenses. What’s more, especially on multiples, we offer these components for 20-40% less than leading catalog prices.

As a registered ITAR supplier, Ross Optical and is carefully tracking ITAR changes and what they could mean to you and your optics supply chain.*

In previous posts we have offered advice on designing optical systems for ease of assembly, performance, and manufacturability. Incorporating cost considerations into optical design is another important part of the process. The topic of cost optimization could fill an entire course (like Rich Youngworth’s), but for starters, here are four critical design traps that will always increase your system cost.

We recently conducted a survey to learn more about how professionals in the optics industry are managing their supply chains. Respondents spanned a range of industries and roles, but a few similarities emerged.

Newton's Cradle: The end-user market impacts OEMs and vendors further up the supply chain.

Supply Chain Challenges

Being an original equipment manufacturer is a weighty responsibility. As an OEM you provide critical components for your customers’ products, and you never want to be the bottleneck that holds up production.

OEMs of optical products face special challenges. Optical elements require precision fabrication, which can entail a long lead time. Those lead times are compounded when a component requires custom optics. In such a situation it can become difficult to supply a customer’s needs consistently without ending up with an expensive inventory of unsold components.

Sonia is the newest member of the Ross Optical team. Although she’s only been here a month, she has embraced her role in the customer service department, making sure that customers are well taken care of and that any issues they have are resolved quickly and completely.

Coating choices must be an integral part of the optical design process, not an afterthought. This article presents four ways you can leverage early coating decisions to improve the final performance and overall cost of your design.

We are pleased to share that HyperMed, Inc., a developer of hyperspectral imaging devices for medical applications, has named Ross Optical their Tier II Supplier of the Year for 2015.

Previously we explored unusual scientific applications of smartphone technology. This week we direct our attention to telemedicine and discuss how Ross Optical is helping a healthcare company bridge the divide between patient and provider.