Laboratory Workflow Redesign & Process Improvement

These are days of increased pressure to reduce costs and increase efficiency, productivity and quality for laboratory operations all over the world, from large enterprise facilities to small analytical services centers. It's a multifaceted challenge that demands many diverse and sometimes conflicting needs to be fulfilled, such as

• Maximizing throughput
• Reducing waste
• Saving energy
• Shortening turnaround times
• Efficiently allocating laboratory staff and resources
• Quickly delivering analytical results
• Timely reporting of relevant information
• Adhering to quality standards
• Increasing regulatory compliance

There are so many variables in the equation that allocating your budget to the newest, fastest and most efficient instrument is unlikely to be the solution for the real bottlenecks of your process flow. The industry leader in laboratory workflow and process optimization, LABVANTAGE provides the expertise required to eliminate the inefficiencies in your laboratory and optimizes your business processes.

Experts in Best Practices for Laboratory Workflow

In nearly three decades of presence in the market, LABVANTAGE has accumulated unparalleled experience in laboratory workflows of a variety of industry segments. We deeply understand your industry and recognize that although extremely important, LIMS is only a part of the solution to your laboratory process improvement needs.

The most wisely designed LIMS system cannot ensure that physical samples are analyzed before they start deteriorating; it may track the incoming sample rate but won't explain sudden and apparently unpredictable surges of samples hitting your laboratory and causing stress to staff and instrumentation. It will store your standard operating procedures (SOPs) but it won't write them for you; it will interface nicely with a liquid handling device, but it won't devise a plan to automate sample handling in your laboratory in order to boost throughput.

While LABVANTAGE can provide you with a well-designed LIMS, you need experts that know what happens to physical samples before, during and after their existence as database records.

LABVANTAGE can provide you with that expertise too.

Laboratory Process Improvement. Delivered.

LABVANTAGE's approach to workflow redesign is based on the principles of Lean Six Sigma. LABVANTAGE will guide you throughout this process to drive your laboratory towards streamlined and efficient workflows, establishing quality procedures to facilitate the achievement of laboratory accreditations.

The typical process improvement cycle goes through the following phases:

• Establish a collaborative environment within a Process Excellence Team where all stakeholders are represented and the "to be" state of your laboratory operation is designed jointly
• Provide a quantitative definition of the problem statement and desired objectives, e.g. improving test results turnaround time by 20%
• Assess the existing workflows accomplished through activity monitoring, analysis of SOPs, shadowing and interviewing laboratory staff, etc.
• Present a breakdown of processes, root cause analysis and comparison with industry best practices will be used to devise recommendations corrective actions to set your lab on the path of achieving the desired targets
• Define a set of key performance indicators accessible through easy reporting or more sophisticated business intelligence tools facilitating constant monitoring of process performance and detecting any deviation from the desired outcome