Project: Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS)

Background: Millipore’s protein analysis business in Dundee, Scotland supports large pharmaceutical customers such as Eli Lilly and Merck. The analysis was based on a process tied to massive Microsoft Excel spreadsheets requiring significant manual intervention. As the number of proteins being analyzed increased, the limits of Microsoft Excel as an effective tool and data store were quickly reached. Millipore needed a more customer-friendly way to present the results of their protein analysis service.

Solution: OSC helped Millipore develop the requirements for the project: a web-based laboratory information management system (LIMS) that provided workflow, automated analysis of data quality, and final document output. OSC implemented this solution with a team of on and offsite resources. We coordinated a global team: lab analysts in Scotland, developers in Brazil to deliver the best results for the client in Massachusetts. Our test engineers developed thousands of test cases to verify that the complex analytical engine was robust and accurate. We enabled the client to monitor the progress of the project by looking at the percentage of passing test cases.

Summary: The resulting application allowed the screening panels to grow from 60 proteins to 255 and reduced the turnaround time from six weeks to one. The automated system freed PhDs from data entry tasks saving the firm money and raising employee job satisfaction. Over the four-month project our team started off with an estimation accuracy of 83.3%. Through the use of the OpenApproach, within three sprints the team had reduced the variance in estimating to 5% while increasing capacity more than 9%.