 | LabWare's philosophy since they first began marketing LIMS has been to put the customer first. They have done this by tackling an extremely complex application and making it as simple to configure as possible. Over the years the product has grown with the help of input from hundreds of interested parties from all parts of the globe and from every kind of laboratory.
We sometimes hear the criticism that LabWare LIMS is an unnecessarily big product since it tries to be everything to everybody and no laboratory will need all the facilities available. But this is surely missing the point. It is true that a steel plant laboratory is unlikely to perform stability studies whereas a pharmaceutical laboratory probably will. But the effort put in by LabWare in conjunction with the pharmaceutical companies has, for example, produced an excellent implementation of secure reporting that is being used by a steel company for distributing their certificates of analysis.
Here are some other examples:
- The Interpretation Manager written for wear metal analysis finds a use in investigating trends in environmental and clinical labs
- Project Manager enhancements for Veterinary clients in Australia prove useful for coal labs in South Africa
- Static Data Lifecycle module designed to satisfy FDA requirements also suits ISO 17025 accreditation
- An XML interface asked for at one of the North American User Group Meetings is used for standard data exchange of process data in a South African brewery
- Remote login of samples over the Web developed for clients of a large multinational manufacturing company will work for logging drill-core samples in a mining application and a scheme to enable schoolchildren to monitor groundwater in remote parts of Namibia
So what we are saying is that while not every new development is going to be of interest to every laboratory, there are so many new developments that, inevitably, many of the developments will be of use, and at no additional cost.
The success LabWare has achieved in producing this hugely comprehensive package has been greatly influenced by the natural qualities of the Web, which enables people who are physically remote from each other to work together so well. In the uncommon event of a laboratory finding a need not satisfied by the LIMS, the mechanisms are there to have it developed and in such a way that every customer is able to benefit.
Furthermore, the LabWare LIMS community willingly works together to help each other, solving each other's problems, sharing hints and moving the product forwards. |