The Focus on Customer Productivity

Lab productivity, workflow-based solutions and ease of use were major themes for instrument companies at Analytica 2016. Major instrument firms have positioned themselves to serve these needs by providing a broad range of analytical techniques; an integrated offering of hardware, software, consumables and services; and a focus on all aspects of application-based workflows. IBO spoke with executives at three major instrument companies about the impact of these factors.

At Analytica, Agilent Technologies launched the Infinity II 1260 LC (see page 6). The launch encompasses a solutions-based approach as the system is configured to work with new fittings, columns and OpenLab 2.0, the latest version of Agilent’s CDS. As Victoria Wadsworth-Hansen, global director of Public Relations at Agilent, told IBO at Analytica, “Going to market with a family of products makes it easier for the customer to order —knowing that these products have been developed together with the instrument [and] knowing that all those things fit in and are optimized for that particular workflow and that customer experience.”

Increasing lab productivity is an overarching goal. As Dr. Stefan Schütte, vice president and general manager of Agilent’s Liquid Phase Separations Division, explained, lab productivity can be enhanced by hardware design; for example, by contributing to ease of use.“ [A]lot of thought was going into the overall design and making the user interaction with the system less error prone, more reliable, more robust and faster.” Instrument design also contributes to productivity by enabling full utilization. “The other thing is really around further reducing cost and thinking of total cost of ownership. What I strongly believe is we can further increase lab productivity by improving the overall robustness and up time of an instrument,” he said.

Another building block for increased lab productivity is informatics, both on a system and lab-wide basis. OpenLab 2.0 currently works with GC, LC and single quadrupole MS platforms from multiple vendors. As Dr. Schütte noted, its open architecture is also designed to enable total lab productivity. “So, when you think of OpenLab as a backbone, there are open interfaces where you can then connect instrumentation, special applications [and] software packages,” he explained. “It will also enable certain providers, whether it’s a third party or internally, to develop their own application packages on top of OpenLab independently.”

Instrumentation and software are part of a larger workflow that ultimately drives lab productivity. However, end-user adoption of such workflows can be challenging. “It takes time for customers to really adapt to these new technologies and then, ultimately, also to reflect that in their workflows,” said Dr. Schütte. As he added, the focus then becomes on “what can we do to facilitate that adoption to make it easier for customers to adopt more automated workflows.” One aspect of adoption is user interface (UI). “So we should come up with a really customized workflow—UIs that are specific to the application, to the workflow, but then also specific to the user level.”

An example of an industry that is adapting automated workflows is pharmaceuticals, which, as Dr. Schütte told IBO, is his division’s fastest growing end-market, driven in part by the benefits of automated workflows. “There’s a replacement cycle going on, on the one hand, but also customers are really using the chance to move to more productive, more automated systems,” said Dr. Schütte.

Pharmaceuticals is also the fastest growing market for Waters. As Waters Senior Vice President of Global Markets Mike Harrington, PhD, told IBO, “Currently, Waters’ fastest growing (and coincidently largest) customer segment is the broadly defined pharmaceutical segment. The growth in this market was most pronounced in regulated testing markets, such as quality assurance and quality control testing.”

In this market and others, Waters’ priorities for this year are innovation, global and end-market expansion, and customer engagement. “We strive to provide a superior customer experience from initial awareness or discovery of our solutions to purchase and use of Waters’ technologies through to engagement with our service and support organization,” said Dr. Harrington.

As Dr. Harrington explained, lab productivity is the result of a convergence of factors. “Advances in instrumentation, sample preparation, software, automation and service support can all aid productivity to varying degrees, depending on the task at hand.” Software, in particular, can provide new levels of integration and organization for lab data. Discussing lab productivity, he said, “A good example of this is Waters’ UNIFI Scientific Information System, which is the first software platform to merge LC and high-performance MS data (both quadrupole and TOF) into a single solution that encompasses data acquisition, processing, visualization, reporting, and configurable compliance tools within a networked laboratory environment.“

The integration of software tools extends beyond instrumentation. “Customers are interested in a platform that supports chromatography and mass spectral data, plug-and-play instrument driver services, scientific data management system capabilities for Waters and third-party instrumentation, a framework to host application-specific workflows and an application program interface to provide connectivity with other systems,” explained Dr. Harrington. “We believe that a flexible and scalable common platform for LC and LC/MS will offer customers a unique proposition to improve efficiency by reducing laboratory complexity.”

For PerkinElmer’s Environmental Health Division, which serves the food, environmental and industrial end-markets, integration is also a major theme. As Jon DiVincenzo, president of Environmental Health, told IBO at Analytica, his Division’s priorities for the year include complete solutions. As he asked, “What’s the workflow from sample prep through to analytics?” In line with this goal is an emphasis on application-based software. For food testing, this involves specific application interfaces for legacy PerkinElmer technologies, such as FT-IR. “We see that expanding into wine, edible oils—which is an enormous market—and into the flour area.”

Mr. DiVincenzo cited food as the Division’s fastest growing end-market. “We believe there’s an opportunity to expand our presence in food,” he explained. “We were in the high- end food testing labs, but there’s many more opportunities . . . . Whenever you’re trading food across borders, there are quality requirements. Initially, this was around grains and cereals, but dairy is actually an even larger marketplace we’re going after.” Earlier this year, PerkinElmer acquired Delta Instruments, a provider of dairy testing products (see IBO 2/29/16).

In addition to dedicated application solutions for industries such as food, the Division is also taking advantage of its range of technologies. Increasingly, the hyphenation of two techniques, such as GC-IR, is meeting the need for new types of analyses. Mr. DiVincenzo cited speciation as an area of growth. He noted the use of speciation for analyzing the type and amount of arsenic in rice. “You can have arsenic in a natural form where it’s not toxic; in another form, it is toxic. That entails taking an LC and combining it with our ICP-MS.”

The addition of portable GC/MS technology (see IBO 6/30/15) is a further expansion of available techniques, enabling additional types of analyses. It is also in line with the Division’s investment in instrument miniaturization. As Kim Nam Hoon, vice president and general manager of Global Sales and Service for Environmental Health, explained, portable systems save time by eliminating transportation requirements.

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