On November 10th and 11th, the LIMS Forum took place again in Bonn, where we were able to present ourselves as LIMS developers and providers. As every year, the company Klinkner & Partner put together an exciting program that also allowed ample time for discussions among the participants.
For us, the workshops on the topics "With LIMS to more efficiency in the service laboratory" and "QM-supporting functions of a LIMS" were particularly interesting. In the first topic, Mr. Knoff from IMCOR GmbH was supported by our managing director, Mr. Bernd Koschitzki. The focus here was on answering the question of whether a LIMS in the service laboratory must cover all basic ERP functions (CRM, sales, purchasing, invoicing, financial accounting, and cost accounting), or whether a pure laboratory solution with various interfaces to existing ERP solutions would be the better choice.
The two camps differed by the size of the companies. In laboratories with up to 200 employees, an integrated solution was preferred, while large companies often do not have the option of a new ERP. Here, SAP or Navision are standard, and the laboratory software must adapt.
There was consensus that SAP QM is unusable as a LIMS and is not used by any of those present. With iLIMS we offer a solution that meets both requirements. However, we still consider the integrated approach to be the better one.
The workshop on QM support was led by Mr. Röwer (DAkkS assessor) and supported by our head of development, Mr. Jürgen Förster. Here, we were able to refer especially to the advantages of the integrated QM manual in iLIMS, which automatically provides QM instructions at the process steps where they are needed.
In conclusion, it should be noted that this year's LIMS Forum was a special platform for developers and users of laboratory information and management systems once again a very successful meeting with consistently positive feedback, and we are already looking forward to the coming year.
