Most manufacturing plants don't have a beautiful educational auditorium nestled within their sites.
But at Jacksonville's Vistakon, maker of Acuvue disposal contact lenses, an embedded training center is what has helped grow the business since 2004.
The Vision Care Institute, by Johnson & Johnson Vision Care Inc., announced today it has trained 100,000 eye-care professionals in Jacksonville and 13 other centers around the world.
The institute offers optometrists free one-day professional development classes that teach the science behind contact lenses, how to fit them and how to interact with patients.
"The knowledge of how to use contact lenses is good for doctors, patients, and our (contact lens product) category. Then we are successful, too," said Joerg Albrecht, the institute's senior director, Global Management.
Phil Keefer, former president of Vistakon Americas, first envisioned The Vision Care Institute nearly a decade ago as a place where, instead of marketing and preaching the virtues of disposable contact lenses, the company could bring the doctors in and show them how successful they could be with the products.
Because the institute operates independently of the company's manufacturing arm, there's no Acuvue sales pitch that comes with the class, a fact most doctors appreciate, Albrecht said.
In the U.S., the institute serves as a supplement to optometrists' training, keeping them current with evolving technology.
Overseas, it can be what drives optometrists to use contact lenses at all.
For example, in Russia contact lenses were not a large part of the eye-care market when Johnson & Johnson first launched a Vision Care Institute in nearby Prague. Within a year, Johnson & Johnson became Russia's market leader for contact lenses.
And while the 100,000 milestone is meaningful, Albrecht's thoughts are already on the future and how to bring contact lenses to even more people, using an online training app, or road shows that bring education even closer to doctors.
"At the beginning (of the institute) we wondered would they come. Then we wondered if they came, would anybody care," Albrect said. "But then, they did.
"Obviously the number feels great. But what has really felt great is seeing the continuous evolution of this."