A laboratory is not an island: every day, lab teams in SMEs within the process industry work closely with colleagues from other departments, such as production and goods receipt. Management also relies on the results generated in the lab. However, this close collaboration is often not reflected in the software landscape – with many labs still operating with standalone digital solutions to this day.
A standalone solution means the lab software isn’t integrated into the company’s surrounding ERP landscape. This lack of deep integration has serious consequences for day-to-day collaboration.
Was passiert, wenn Unternehmen mit digitalen Insellösungen arbeiten?
- Limited transparency
The various departments cannot access the same data sets and have no real-time overview of the results from audits, quality assurance, etc. These factors increase the need for coordination between departments. - Manual and administrative work
In the laboratory, a lot of data has to be manually entered – even data that is already available in digital form elsewhere. - Quality issues
Where typing and writing are involved, typos are inevitable. The more information enters the systems in this way, the higher the risk of errors and inaccuracies creeping in. This has a negative impact on data quality. - Insufficient verifiability
Incomplete or incorrect documentation can reduce the verifiability of test processes and test steps. - Cost and staffing pressures
Inefficient processes cost time and money: highly qualified employees spend too much of their working time on admin instead of their core tasks. For companies in the process industry, this is becoming a growing problem in times of a shortage of skilled workers. - Lack of data for making business decisions
If management lacks direct access to relevant information, it will also lack the data to make effective business decisions. It must either request this information or painstakingly gather it itself.
LIMS in the Process Industry: The Basis for Cross-Departmental Collaboration
But it doesn’t have to be that way. With an integrated laboratory information management system (LIMS), companies can ensure that the lab is digitally connected to all relevant departments. PART supports SMEs in the process industry with a LIMS that is fully integrated into their SAP environment.
This full integration transforms cross-departmental collaboration at its core: plant management can now optimize process control, as workflows can be mapped digitally from start to finish without any media discontinuity. All parties involved access the same database in real time and, if desired, also on mobile devices. This increases transparency and makes information more broadly accessible. This not only helps companies meet their documentation requirements; it also enables management to find all the information needed for strategic decision-making quickly and easily.
What’s more, a high degree of automation in the PART laboratory software for the process industry ensures that laboratory teams are relieved of having to do administrative tasks and can focus more on their core responsibilities.
LIMS in Use
- Periodic testing with LIMS
A chemical manufacturer wants to regularly test a product for properties such as density, viscosity, pH value, and more. After production, the chemical is placed in a quality management (QM) storage area, from where the various testing steps are initiated. The lab receives a notification in LIMS about the upcoming test.
The responsible employee can enter all collected values into templates that are already pre-filled with the relevant information. Once the test is complete and no issues are found, the goods can be moved to the regular warehouse or sent for shipping. During an audit, you can immediately prove the quality level and demonstrate that all checks were carried out properly.
- Inspection of incoming goods with LIMS
A food distributor receives a delivery of dates. It arrives at the goods receipt and is registered there. In LIMS, a testing process is automatically triggered, e.g. to test the moisture content, the pH level of the dates, and a taste test. The lab team can access standardized test templates in LIMS for this purpose.
All the existing data (date, customer number, etc.) is already stored, so the lab staff only need to enter the test results. Once the testing is complete, the information is immediately available to all teams that need it – whether it's colleagues in inventory management, production, or management.
PART Turns Challenges into Practical Solutions
It’s no coincidence that PART’s LIMS is so precisely tailored to the needs of the process industry: “At PART, we’ve been a trusted partner to the process industry for many years. Through our daily collaboration with customers, we understand exactly how lab workflows operate and what lab software needs to deliver,” says Roman Mayr, Managing Director at PART. “In addition, we worked closely with experienced laboratory and plant managers to develop LIMS.”
PART combined these insights from the industry with its deep tech expertise and its experience as a certified SAP partner. The result is a solution built from practice, for practice. And the partnership doesn’t end with implementation: “In our experience, introducing a LIMS often goes hand in hand with adapting internal processes,” Mayr adds. “That’s why we advise companies on how to optimize their workflows to work more efficiently and in a more digitally driven way. Of course, we also train lab teams to ensure a smooth transition to working with the tool.”
Would you like to digitalize your lab processes and make it easier to work together across your plant with full SAP integration? Set up a free LIMS demo now!
