The fact that their existing system was customizable ultimately meant that Aum Lab would have to maintain dedicated internal programming resources or pay significant amounts to the LIMS vendor for development and upgrades. In addition, a fair amount of operational and analytical work was actually done outside the system. Either way, the existing laboratory software wasn’t getting the job done. “We needed a system that could more comprehensively accommodate our processes in the laboratory,” Employee said.

The first step was to take a hard look at the existing system and determine what upgrades would be necessary to fully meet the lab’s needs. Even the latest version of the software essentially required Aum Lab to take responsibility for managing the business level of the software code. The system basically had its own scripting language that required a certain level of coding expertise to add functionality that was not in the canned release. They felt that the cost was simply too high and the technology platform made the company extremely reliant on maintaining that internal development capability.

After considering the cost of upgrading from the existing system, Aum Lab considered Ignitive LIMS. Ignitive LIMS is a commercial off-the-shelf system that offers a significant level of configurability rather than requiring a lot of customization. Developed specifically for analytical testing laboratories, Ignitive LIMS has a purpose-built feature set that is highly relevant for environmental testing compared to the features offered by other systems that have a more generic focus.

The team explored the benefits that Ignitive LIMS could deliver. They looked at the potential to reduce paper, postage, and data entry due to automated workflow. Manual data capture and transcription from multiple spreadsheets or from paper would be eliminated. The benefits would be derived from a number of features that streamlined sample management from login to final results delivery. “It wasn’t like one silver bullet, it was like silver buckshot,” said one of the Employees.

Improving Productivity and Quality

According to one of the Employees, implementation of Ignitive LIMS had a direct and positive impact on productivity and quality. The laboratory software is used for everything across the lab from sample receiving to sample disposal, to operations management. “Our productivity as a whole is up a solid 20% from where we were. That might not all be attributable to Ignitive LIMS, but I know that we couldn’t do the amount of work that we do now, with the same number of people, still using the old system.”

And with the previous LIMS, the lab team did not automatically put all QC into the system. It was only available when it was going to be reported out to a client. Consequently, some of the information resided in the LIMS but other information was outside the LIMS in spreadsheets. “With Ignitive LIMS, the bulk of the quality control data goes in automatically so it makes it easier to track and monitor quality in the lab,” said one of the Employees

Meadows sums up his view of the value of implementing Ignitive LIMS and the business case for making the investment in laboratory software that improves efficiency. “Ignitive LIMS has definitely put us in a position to be able to accommodate substantially more work than we could otherwise have done with the old system. We can do more work with fewer resources than we used to, and we don’t have to keep someone on staff to write source code. Ignitive LIMS has taken that pressure off the business so we can focus on what we’re really good at.”

Having seen several other LIMS over the years,The client knew what he wanted. “We wanted something that would be simple to use and could help manage our samples from the beginning of the process to the final report.” Shukra Lab also considered developing a system internally but the team quickly concluded that the effort would be expensive, time consuming and would not produce a product they could support.

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“You can tell that Element LIMS was developed by people who understand the laboratory.”

– Chief Science Officer

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Ignitive LIMS from was selected as the LIMS for Shukra Lab and was implemented over the course of several weeks. The management team identified four key criteria to determine success and has been very satisfied with the results. Their goal was to implement a system that was: 1) easy to use,
2) affordable,
3) would strengthen quality management, and most importantly
4) delivered improvements in productivity.

The system was also considered very affordable. Like many labs, Shukra Lab is a medium sized lab with a medium sized budget. The management team wanted the most value for their money and with Ignitive LIMS, did not incur an overwhelming expense—or create an expensive multi-year customization project. The total-cost-of-ownership has proven positive. The need for training of new employees has been minimal and there has been no requirement to significantly modify the product beyond the upgrades provided through the annual maintenance agreement.

Ignitive LIMS offered increased quality control discipline by eliminating manual entry of instrument data, and physically requiring lab supervisors to review work before advancing it to the next step. In addition, the internal audit trail added oversight and troubleshooting capability by tracking changes to analytical data and non-analytical records. QA/QC Officer for Shukra Lab, agrees. “The audit trail is very helpful in figuring out where problems are and fixing them—great for QC and troubleshooting. “

Sample Management: Sample management and tracking represent one of the core functionalities of Ignitive LIMS. Streamlined workflow and automated processes such as auto-conversion from Bid to Project and integrated work order launch, reduce overhead activities. Built-in hold time and scheduling alerts keep the lab running smoothly and help highlight bottlenecks. “We generate a convenient report that identifies unanalyzed samples in each area of the lab. This is also useful when we get a new set of samples in the lab that may have a shorter processing time or higher priority, “ noted.

Flexible Reporting: Standard and customized reporting enables the management team and lab staff to more effectively manage the workload and identify issues quickly. The reporting engine is easy to use and enables custom reports to manage operations as well as deliver analytical reports to customers that meet their unique requirements. “Ignitive LIMS is almost unlimited in terms of the information you can get,” says the Client. The team even uses reports to monitor work that is outsourced to help make decisions on workload balancing.

AGD Biomedicals installed Element LIMS, which has become an integral part of their operation ever since. The transition itself did not take long, requiring about two days of onsite training from Ignitive LIMS staff members and around one month to transfer existing information and lab systems over to Element LIMS. This time frame is a shorter than most labs but shows what can be done when the staff is prepared and the implementation tasks are straight forward. Today, over 40 of AGD Biomedicals Labs’ employees use the system—making up two thirds of the company’s staff.

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“Ignitive LIMS is now key to the lab’s operation and has had a positive effect on almost every aspect of the company’s business.”

– CEO

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AGD Biomedicals now has greater user-flexibility, including the ability to query data, manage statistics and perform QA operations with a single program. The lab has also benefited from the custom reporting capabilities. With a large library of available formats, Ignitive LIMS allows lab employees to tailor each report to meet specific customer needs. Information from Ignitive LIMS is easily applied to other applications, to meet the needs of clients who are working with predetermined electronic data deliverables (EDDs).

AGD Biomedicals have experienced benefits from Ignitive LIMS as well. Because Project Managers have greater access to more current data, it can be made available to clients as it is produced, via the web access component of Ignitive LIMS. This allows the lab’s clients to see reviewed data and view updates as they occur.

Increasing Efficiency Throughout the Lab

Using Ignitve LIMS, the AGD Biomedicals sales team is able to quickly create bids that follow their unique pricing structure. The operations division is able to process and track samples more accurately and efficiently, improving accuracy and productivity.

AGD Biomedicals has also made significant improvements to QA procedures with Ignitive LIMS. With internal control charts and the ability to create a fluid sequence of queries that capture the needed standards and information for each testing batch, Ignitive LIMS has made it much easier to incorporate AGD Biomedicals’ QA processes and meet regulatory needs.

Babcock Labs has also found Element LIMS very useful from a project management standpoint. According to Mackenzie, the ability to look at historical data in Element LIMS, coupled with the custom operations and quality reporting, provides project managers with greater planning and oversight.

To survive and thrive in a highly competitive market place, Swastik Lab boldly expanded their facilities and testing capabilities. But where the new bricks and mortar created opportunities, the lab’s LIMS simply created new challenges. A fragile information management infrastructure threatened the growth of the business. The existing LIMS had three main deficiencies,
1) the system became so customized that it could no longer be cost-effectively maintained,
2) the technology platform was outdated and did not scale,
3) instrument data had to be entered manually—a growing issue because the number of instruments eventually doubled.

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“Our existing system required a lot of customization and became very complicated and difficult to use and maintain. We wanted to do things faster and more efficiently.” said CEO.

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Key Benefits after installation of Ignitive LIMS

Sample Management: The flow through the lab has become very efficient. From sample login and receiving, to prep, to the chemist at the bench, workflow is now much more streamlined. “Backlog is easily reviewed and samples are tracked all the way through the lab in one seamless process,” noted. Sample tracking is also aided by internal system alerts that notify users when hold times are near expiration, test results exceed limits, or other pre-defined conditions are met.

Intuitive User Interface: The task-oriented user interface enables users to focus on the things that they really care about. “At any moment they can tell what to do and project managers can easily track samples,” said Inorganic Section Supervisor and Technical Director.

Instrument integration: With the increase in the number of instruments in the lab growing from twenty to forty, the use of Element DataTool for data integration was pivotal. “Connecting our instruments directly to the LIMS has made a big improvement—not just by reducing errors and improving data quality but by increasing efficiency,” said CEO.

Web Access for Clients: Web access for lab clients has become an important tool for Swastik Laboratories. With convenient browser-based access, clients can look up the status of their projects, get real-time results and view reports all online—anytime, without having to call a Project Manager.

Improved quality management: Online audit trails and internal system alerts within Ignitive support a strengthened quality control system. The automated features and color coding help identify problems quickly and facilitate corrective action. And as Technical Director noted, when the EPA audits the lab they appreciate the quality of tracking and monitoring. “We show them [the EPA] the sample flow and they are impressed.”

Following the Ignitive LIMS four-step implementation process was straight forward and the project went extremely smoothly. Ignitive LIMS provided assessment and planning, system configuration, administrator/user training, and system testing over the course of one week. After a break to deal with end-of-year sample testing, the lab staff rapidly transitioned to the new system. They were essentially up and running in a total cumulative time of less than three weeks. “We turned it on and never looked back,” said the laboratory supervisor

Areas of improvement

Instrument Integration: One big problem the lab faced was the difficulty getting data from their fifteen data-generating instruments. The whole manual process slowed down turnaround time and introduced quality issues. With Ignitive LIMS however, the data is downloaded automatically with the Ignitive LIMS DataTool feature—saving a great deal of time and improving quality by eliminating data entry error. “Data coming off the GC or ICP instruments goes right into the LIMS,” notes the laboratory supervisor. “That was quite a bit of data we use to enter manually. We saw the benefits of Ignitive LIMS pretty much as soon as the instruments were connected.” An added benefit is that all current and future instruments are integrated with Igintive LIMS at no additional charge.

Turnaround Time: Ignitive LIMS had a significant impact on turnaround time. By streamlining the workflow and automating certain processes, the lab was able to improve turnaround time by fifty percent. The way Ignitive LIMS handles batching with multi-level tracking is one example. Previously, batching was done manually. “Before Ignitive LIMS, the average turnaround was 6-7 days, with a goal of no more than 10 days.” said the laboratory supervisor.

Quality Control: Managing standards, calibration data, and QC parameters is no longer a burden for the lab. Ignitive LIMS keeps track of standards and calibration control standards automatically.

Workload Management: Balancing the lab workload used to be a manual challenge. Keeping track of where everything was proved to be so painful that it generally wasn’t done well. With Ignitive LIMS, the team is now able to start every day with a quick view of the work orders and their status. .