2007-11-11A major oil company faced a dilemma with the existing LIMS and LIMS data entry terminals at their leading R&D facility.
Their LIMS was a VAX-based application that had been developed in-house. Data entry was performed via VAX terminals located throughout their facility. Planned upgrades to the LIMS were going to render their current data entry methods obsolete. A decision had to be made to either upgrade the methods on the existing VAX terminals or move the data entry to another platform. The decision was made to replace the VAX data entry terminals with Windows® workstations.
They then had to decide to either develop the data entry application in-house or to work with a commercially available solution. After much consideration and review they were able to come up with 5 compelling reasons to choose LimsLink as their interfacing solution rather than take on the project with their own in-house IT team.
Reduced Impact on IT Resources
Using LimsLink avoided having to commit IT resources to a costly and time-consuming project to develop their own custom interfaces. This left the IT department free to focus their resources on the upgrades to the LIMS. In addition, on-going technical support and product development for LimsLink would be provided by Labtronics, not their own internal resources.
Faster Deployment
Because LimsLink is available off-the-shelf, the company would not have to wait until a custom solution was developed and tested before they started deploying their interfaces. Without having to go through the lengthy development cycle required for an in-house solution, the IT group would be able to start rolling out new interfaces almost immediately.
Proven Success
Even if they developed their own in-house solution, they knew that there was no guarantee that they would produce a better solution. They recognized that with LimsLink they could have a solution with a proven track record of success that would meet all of their interfacing requirements.
A Consistent Interface for All Instruments
LimsLink gave them a solution that could be configured to interface with any laboratory instrument, without changing the look and feel of the program for the end user. This gave their analysts the flexibility to move from instrument to instrument, without having to learn a custom application that was developed for that instrument. Using LimsLink as the one product to interface all of the instrumentation at their facility provided a consistent look and feel to all of their interfaces. See Table 1 for a list of tests and instruments that they interfaced.
| Chromatography | GC / CDSPE
TurboChrom
Agilent Chemstation
| | Simulated Distillation | GC
PerkinElmer TurboChrom
Agilent SIMDIS
| Automated Distillation
| Precision ADA
ISL ADA
Herzog Distillation Apparatus
| Density
| Anton-Parr DMA 45/48
| Moisture Analysis
| Karl Fischer Metrohm Titrator
| FTIR
|
| InsGravimetric Analysis
| Balances – multiple vendors
| Viscosity
| Canon Auto Viscometer
| Total Carbon
| Leco
| XRF
| Phillips XRF
| Sulfur Analysis
| Horiba Sulfur Analyzer
Leco Sulfur Analyzer
| Metals Analysis
| ICP – multiple vendors
AA – multiple vendors
| Trace Metals Analysis
| ICP – multiple vendors
AA – multiple vendors
| Flashpoint
| ISL Flashpoint
| Table 1: Instruments and tests that are interfaced with LimsLink.
Flexibility in Data Management and Reporting
While LimsLink is an off-the-shelf solution, it still provided them with the flexibility to create interfaces that matched their requirements. They did not feel that they had to sacrifice any functionality that they could have had with a custom solution.
For example, one of the requirements of their interfaces was to check sample results to ensure that they were within limits, before sending the results to the LIMS. This was a key requirement as they recognized that timely identification of out-of-limit samples is a proven way of improving laboratory performance. LimsLink gave them the ability to include Limit Checking plus any other calculations that they wanted in their instrument interfaces.
They were also able to take advantage of the fact that LimsLink can automatically generate multiple reports and report formats. Reports can be sent to different destinations, allowing users to automatically send sample results to other applications, in addition to sending data to the LIMS. They used this feature to generate a separate report file of QC results that is automatically sent directly to Quality Analyst from NWA for further processing. | “Over 160 LimsLink methods are now being used by over 40 analysts to process approximately 450,000 samples per year.” |
The decision to use LimsLink as the replacement for their outdated VAX system has been an unqualified success. By using LimsLink, they have successfully migrated all of their automated analytical methods from the old VAX terminals to the Windows® workstations. Over 160 LimsLink methods are now being used by over 40 analysts to process approximately 450,000 samples per year.
The next phase of the project is to create LimsLink methods to capture data from their manual methods. When that phase is completed, analysts will no longer need to run a LIMS client at their workstation for manual data entry. They will use LimsLink as the sole application for all data input to the LIMS.
Based on the success at the R&D facility, LimsLink has been selected and successfully implemented as the instrument interfacing solution at another R&D location and 2 production facilities within the corporation.
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