Digitalising lab orders

‘In 1986 AGROLAB was founded in Germany by its current CEO Dr. Paul Wimmer. At the time, he started with three employees. In 2005, AGROLAB took over the laboratory branch of Tauw. Meanwhile, the AGROLAB GROUP has dozens of branches throughout Europe and more than 1,900 employees. The AGROLAB GROUP has won several awards and was among the winners of the Bayerns Best 50 for the 6th time in 2021.

I have been working for AL-West BV in Deventer for 10 years. I started as head of the organic department, now I work as a site manager. Our site currently employs more than 220 people. We are really a production site and perform various analyses, including those for soil research. Each year we receive over 400,000 sample containers. Depending on the assignment, these are broken down into several sub-samples and thus analyses. As site manager, I have final responsibility and ensure that everything runs smoothly and efficiently. I also keep an eye on cost savings and make sure that our people can do their work efficiently. The digitalization of processes plays an important role in this.’

‘The collaboration with TerraIndex began in 2002. Together with companies including the then Alcontrol and Analytico, we developed a standard exchange protocol for investigation firms and laboratories. TerraIndex soil investigation software grew out of that work.

In the past, converting data to the SIKB digital exchange format was quite a challenge. This was necessary for customers’ orders to enter our LIMS (Laboratory Information Management System) directly. This now works without problems, helping us process orders directly and serve customers faster. Our IT department worked closely with TerraIndex to achieve this. It was a pleasant collaboration.’

‘In the Netherlands, we are truly ahead of our market in terms of digitalisation. In Germany and other European countries, much more is still done by hand. Digitalisation is important for us to work efficiently and without errors. Digital orders and samples with scannable barcodes can be transferred without errors into our own LIM system. Samples are traceable and investigation results can then easily be uploaded for the customer. Paper orders and samples with handwritten labels still have to be entered and split manually, with labels numbered again by hand. This is time-consuming work with a risk of transcription errors.

Of course, it would be ideal if all customers worked from one system. But that is not always possible. For smaller customers, for example, moving to digital processes is not always worthwhile yet.’

‘Because most assignments are delivered digitally, we can provide our customers with reliable results increasingly quickly and efficiently. Because we can perform more analyses in a shorter time and with fewer people, we can also reduce our costs and thus the prices for the customer. It is our mission to provide customers with reliable and accurate analysis results on time, at an optimal price and performance ratio, with excellent customer service. Digitization certainly helps us accomplish this mission.

Currently, we provide our customers with analyses results within 5 working days as standard. Analyses that require faster results can be requested separately. Our goal is to go from the standard 5 to 4 working days. By further digitalizing the processes, partly in cooperation with TerraIndex, we expect to be able to better serve our customers.’