The LIMS Project

LIMS stands for Laboratory Information Management System. It’s a software system designed to service the needs of a laboratory.  In the case of IPL, those needs are ever varied and ever changing.

The IPL LIMS Team is currently working on a collaborative LIMS Project with Refining NZ IT and Spark. Our current LIMS system is more than a decade old and is unsupported by the software manufacturer. We are working with a new manufacturer, Labware, to create a brand new LIMS to service the needs of IPL and its customers, including RNZ.

How critical can one piece of software be to the operation of a laboratory?

Well, it all starts with the samples. First, they’re logged in LIMS, by a scheduler, by the PC or panel workers, or by a technician in the lab. At every stage of the process, sample status is tracked in LIMS.

Then the samples are tested. IPL offers several hundred analyses, all of which are configured in LIMS. Some involve complex calculations, some have a dozen different variations, and some have more than a hundred parameters interfaced with a specific piece of lab equipment.

Our technicians are very good, but not one of us knows every single analysis. We are only able to enter results for analyses that we are fully competent in. Our training records are maintained within LIMS.

After testing is authorized, results are reported using LIMS. Reporting requirements vary between products and sample types, between one customer and another. Each type of report needs its own configuration.

After reporting, invoicing is completed in LIMS. Every customer, every account, and every contract need configuration. RNZ is IPL’s biggest customer with more than a dozen accounts. However, IPL serves the needs of up to a hundred customers at any given time.

So, how critical can one piece of software be to the operation of a laboratory?

It turns out…very.