During the course of last few years, I noticed that many LIMS (of all genre such as environmental, food and material testing lims providers) firms are projecting and making claims (many a times incorrect) that their software can manage calibration lab as well, but in reality their software when shown was only doing equipment data management (which is off course is a one of the primary requirements of Laboratories) but is just a fraction of total requirements for any commercial calibration laboratory.
Calibration LIMS is more than just a equipment management of laboratory and in many ways different from Testing LIMS software, all of these are quite different in many ways:
1. Calibration LIMS have to have functionality of calculating uncertainty for each certificate of calibration and many top rated laboratories gives uncertainty at each data point.
vs
Testing LIMS have to use the test results recorded by its instrument to find uncertainty for the purpose of calculating their capability of tolerance.
2. Calibration LIMS have to reuse the UUC/DUC instrument details in order to reduce efforts on repeat calibration and also to find drift wrt earlier calibration.
vs
Testing LIMS, Sample registered is consumable and it reuse-ability is not of any relevant after a certain period of retention time. Repeat arrival of same sample has to be treated as a separate entity in itself.
3. Uncertainty and Environment corrections and other Calculations accuracy is very much essential requirement of Calibration LIMS software as these are required at every data point.
vs
Environment Calculations and other related calculation accuracy are required in testing laboratories also but since experiment (testing) is done in controlled environment and intricacies of calculations are already considered by equipment used for testing thus it is not essential.
4. Calibration Points need to be remembered by the LIMS thus it is expected when the instrument come for re-calibration, lab calibrate a instrument on the same calibration points.
vs
Testing Material when is received in the lab, customer specify parameters most of the times thus it may not be the rule unless testing lab is in contract to test similar test parameters.
5. Calibration LIMS must have a feature to inform their customers about their instrument upcoming calibration due date an followup (with UUC details) to get the repeat business. i.e. Calibration Labs must act as a partner to their customers and help them to manage and keep gages/instruments up to date wrt Calibration date.
vs
Testing lims can also seek repeat business but only on the basis of product or its specifications as every time a sample is dispatched by customers are of different batch.
6. Calibrations Jobs are managed by calibration labs as an assignments (or project or SRF) with multiple jobs associated with each of the instrument sent for the calibration
vs
Every testing job is a job in itself, a collection of test samples may be received by the testing labs but these samples often have different batch numbers and labs are required to test these samples individually (with some giving option to provide a merged test report for all samples of the batch)
7. Conformity reporting in calibration certificate requires more in-depth analysis of uncertainty falling in the w-band however customer seeking conformity are less and not all instruments are covered by ISO or standards thus conformity reporting is optional for these type of instruments
vs
Most of the testing of samples are covered by ISO or standards thus conformity guideline has to be enforced on almost all test parameters.
