By Scott Meacham
Copyright © 2017, The Oklahoma Publishing Co.
For nearly two decades, millions of surgical patients across the world have benefited from the micro precision optics and medical subassemblies and devices invented and produced by Access Optics in Broken Arrow.
This company provides exceptional micro optics to most of the world’s largest original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in the surgical imaging industry. Access Optics’ products are components in surgical equipment used in endoscopy, laparoscopy, knee surgeries, and gallstone removal, just to name a few.
Access Optics began almost 18 years ago when Bob and Pam Hogrefe came to Tulsa to buy a different company. That deal didn’t work out. The Hogrefes, who had lived on both coasts but never in Oklahoma, continued their pursuit of an eclipsing technology. That pursuit led to Access Optics, which now is operating in a new 20,000-square-foot manufacturing facility.
“We’ve turned out nearly a million optical elements, and close to 30,000 medical devices,” Access Optics CEO Bob Hogrefe told me. “If I put a word to it, I’d say we are blossoming.”
I would say so, too.
From day one, the company has shown a rigorous commitment to quality, achieving first an ISO 9001 quality manufacturing designation and then qualifying for