LabVantage has announced that it explored the topic of LIMS governance in a webcast featuring AMR Research and JohnsonDiversey. The LIMS governance webcast focused on how organisations can achieve global laboratory information management standards and scale with local configuration under controlled conditions. An on demand replay of the webcast is now available at www.lims.com/library/events/2009/governance/index.aspx
For many organisations, the value of their current laboratory information management systems (LIMS) has run its course. As many companies look to harmonise their manufacturing processes around the world, ad-hoc functionality has been applied to disparate legacy LIMS in each facility, in an effort to achieve this aggressive goal. However, a divergence of processes has been formed among the different facilities, and organisations have fallen short of achieving their desired results for global operational efficiency and quality assurance. At the same time, information technology (IT) resources have been exhausted on managing numerous, cumbersome legacy LIMS systems, storing redundant data in multiple languages and inconsistent formats.
'This is a very appropriate time to talk about how LIMS plays a very important part in delivering reliable product supply into the supply chain… LIMS and quality, as integrated capability, are integral to the fundamentally important capability of launching products on-time and ramping time to peak sales,' said Roddy Martin, vice president and general manager at AMR Research during the recent webcast. 'As we make out a LIMS selection, the focuses are really around three particular core things: functionality, technology, and flexibility. And you are delivering that [value of LIMS] in fewer than six months,' he added.
Leveraging AMR Research's recent market studies, Martin discussed the current trends in LIMS governance and deployment, including the critical business, functional, and technical factors that companies should consider when selecting their replacement LIMS. Jeff Walsh, quality manager of JohnsonDiversey, shared his 'use case' experience of what was involved when JohnsonDiversey recently replaced its legacy LIMS.
'The question was – how do we automate our lab processes, take control of our data, drive continuous improvement, and standardise it [LIMS] across the globe? Our management wanted to know how we were going to pick a LIMS product in the market today that would fit into our global model,' said Jeff Walsh. 'Technology has to include a light weight product with multi-lingual capabilities. We really needed something that operates on a flexible backbone with minimal code modification. And the ability to take it [LIMS] out-of-the-box, tweak a little bit, and make it fit into the business needs is core to any [LIMS] products' functionality,' he added.
Key aspects discussed in the webcast also include:
How to select a configurable-off-the-shelf solution to facilitate global standardisation coupled with local customisation, without modification.
How to enable multi-site, multi-language deployment with a single solution.
What LIMS architecture is required to support global operations, both in-sourced and outsourced.
How to leverage functionality beyond traditional LIMS to streamline enterprise operations.
