LIMS allows the management of all the information generated in the laboratory.
Increasingly, company laboratories are linked to production processes, providing accurate and timely information on production processes and the quality of intermediate and final products. Therefore, most of the activities carried out in laboratories are subject to established quality standards.
This is where LIMS (Laboratory Information Management System) comes into play. What are LIMS systems? They are laboratory information management systems widely used in industry (they are suitable for any type of industry where laboratory analysis is performed), which allow the management of in-process quality control data.
Today, LIMS systems are present in the laboratories of many companies for two simple reasons: economics and usability. LIMS systems are, nowadays, within the reach of many companies, since they only have to incorporate the system to the computer equipment and, in addition, it is not a particularly complicated system to use.
Likewise, laboratories within companies are a valuable source of information and a very important tool to ensure the efficiency of manufacturing processes and compliance with product specifications. They are also the way to promote the optimization of resources and processes when complying with regulations in regulated environments such as FDA (Food and Drug Administration), GxP (Good X Practices), etc.
In our case, at Oasys, we have implemented LIMS systems in different projects within the pharmaceutical industry (Tereos Syral) and the paper industry (Miquel y Costas Group). In the first case, in the Tereos Syral project, an MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems) system was developed for the manufacturing line of the Zaragoza plant.
Several projects have been developed for Miquel y Costas in several of its plants (Besòs and La Pobla de Claramunt), which had as main object a LIMS tool connected to the production machines.
These two examples show that LIMS systems can be developed as stand-alone software, or as a module that is part of a more complete solution, for example in MES systems.
The following is a list of the functionalities typically supported by LIMS systems:
- Management of specifications and characteristics to be controlled
- Master data management
- Sample management
- Sampling plans (by periodicity, by event and manuals)
- Sample creation
- Unique code assignment, printing of bar code labels
- Reuse of existing samples for long periodicity analysis
- Combination of samples
- Sampling
- From mobile devices
- Bar code reading
- Entering analysis results
- Manual (laboratory technician)
- Automatic (direct connection to automatic analyzer equipment)
- Generation of warnings or incidents
- Sample expiration notices
- Incidents due to out-of-specification analysis
- Approval and closing of results
- Electronic signature (username and password)
- Control system integration (SCADAs, DCS)
- Collect process data of interest to the laboratory
- Integration with MES or ERP systems
- Batch, production order, release, etc.
- Instrument calibration status management
- Calibration expiration date
- Incidents due to out-of-calibration instruments
- Reports with the results of the analyses and the limits of their specification
- Internal or customer-formatted reports (certificates)
- Graphical information with actual values and limits of critical characteristics
- Real and historical time
- Traceability of all sample related events
- Sampling, batch, results, incidents, approvals, etc.
Engineer Advisor Specialist Manufact. & Infrastructure