Introduction
Special Metals Corporation’s (SMC) Huntington facility is a leading supplier of nickel alloys, with the largest facility of its type in the world. They are at the forefront of advancing the development of new alloys and production methods; therefore, their laboratory must operate to match the level of their production environment.
They needed a system that gave them the ability to not only keep up with the demanding nature of production, but also the flexibility to accommodate new experiments from the engineering group. On top of it all, operating in the demanding world of aerospace manufacturing, the laboratory must meet and maintain strict regulatory and customer requirements.
SMC Huntington – At a Glance
- Employees: 500+
- Location: Huntington, WV
- Primary Industries: Aerospace, Oil & Gas, Energy
- Primary Services: Production of primarily nickel and cobalt-based super alloys
The Journey to Wavefront
A laboratory’s LIMS is a key relationship. Huntington’s original system was designed in-house in the 80’s. It worked great for many years; however, over time, it had difficulty keeping up. Any changes needed to facilitate new tests or capturing different types of data required custom code. The effects of Y2K were significant and required much intervention to get things back to a stable state. Eventually, the last developer who knew the system and could support these fixes and changes was nearing retirement. The Huntington folks recognized it was time to find an alternative.
Travis took up the reins of investigating LIMS solutions and brought Wavefront in for a demonstration. The Wavefront team reviewed the laboratory’s needs and presented a pilot of what the LIMS might look like for the Huntington team. Soon afterwards, the Wavefront LIMS implementation was underway
Benefits
The implementation went well, with the Wavefront and Huntington teams working closely to set up a system that would not only meet their lab’s needs, but also support them up in the future for continued success.
Their Wavefront LIMS system utilizes integrations with other laboratories they work with to eliminate manual data entry and typos. Since Wavefront LIMS is web-based they can now review test data anywhere, saving reams of paper as well as facilitating working from home, vitally important in recent years.
Huntington’s laboratory, utilizing Wavefront LIMS, can now create tests and new fields themselves whenever they need, no code customization required. However, some of the best value comes from Wavefront LIMS’s streamlined data capture. This provides immediate review and analysis of data. Being in a production environment, the laboratory must be able to turn around test results very quickly so that the production operations can either continue processing or make adjustments to ensure the end product meets customer requirements. In the past, this system limitations made this nearly impossible and production had to rely on estimations to determine their next steps. This would sometimes lead to processing nonconforming material, and the eventual scrapping of that material, causing up to tens of thousands of dollars of loss each time.
However, with Wavefront LIMS’s capabilities, the laboratory can turnaround results within minutes of receiving samples, allowing for decisions based on actual test data. This has saved Huntington hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.
Summary
Since Huntington has completed the implementation of Wavefront LIMS, they have continued to expand the system’s capabilities. Whether it is new SPC functionality to suit their unique needs and those of NADCAP and internal requirements, or questions about new capabilities, Wavefront continues to help Huntington’s laboratory excel. No longer needing to request data from IT over several iterations, data is available at the click of a button, saving days of time and providing more information than ever before. Huntington can now have the right data at their fingertips to make informed decisions.
If you’d like to learn more about Wavefront LIMS and how your lab can see similar success to Huntington’s, schedule a demo today!
To learn more about Wavefront LIMS and our features for Advanced Materials Laboratories, visit the advanced materials page on our website: LIMS for Advanced Materials Labs
