Customer interviews
Increasing R&D efficiency with ConturELN
Interview with Dr. Christian Schumacher, Global Innovation & Technology Manager Textile Solutions at DyStar GmbH
In difficult times when the world economy is in turmoil and competition for the customer gets tougher, it is even more important for companies to streamline their working processes. Having an electronic lab notebook is one way for an R&D intensive company to boost productivity in the research lab. Dr. Christian Schumacher, Global Innovation & Technology Manager Textile Solutions at DyStar GmbH, shares his thoughts on how ConturELN has helped them to save time and thus money.
DyStar Textilfarben GmbH is a world-leading supplier of textile dyes, auxiliaries and services for the textile and leather industries. Formed in 1995 from a merger between Hoechst and Bayer’s textile dye businesses as a specialist in textile coloration, DyStar has transformed itself into a full solutions provider offering a full range of auxiliaries and colorants. Textile manufacturers for well-known brands such as Lacoste, Nike, adidas, Puma and WalMart rely on DyStar’s innovative products and technologies.
Operating in an innovative industry such as the fashion industry, where new materials, new colors and new effects are the catalysts that spark new fashion trends, DyStar invests heavily in R&D focusing on the synthesis of new colorants and textile auxiliaries as well as dye intermediates.
- Our research is characterized by an ongoing cost pressure, an increasing regulatory environment and accelerating internationalization of the business. At the same time there are high market expectations to deliver the R&D pipeline to the market more quickly, explains Dr. Christian Schumacher, Global Innovation & Tecnology Manager Textile Solutions at DyStar and responsible for all R&D and product innovation conducted in the company.
Changing market requirements as a result of short fashion cycles and the ongoing shift of textile production to low cost countries also implied that their research documentation had to be improved in order to meet these demands. Consequently, DyStar took a strategic investment decision to implement an electronic laboratory notebook system (ELN) with the mission to improve efficiency and to optimize the R&D process. In April 2008, after a thorough evaluation and a pilot project, ConturELN was chosen and implemented at DyStar’s R&D centers in Manchester (UK), Frankfurt am Main and Leverkusen (Germany).
Significant time savings
Today, ConturELN functions as the main research documentation tool for scientists and lab technicians in different research and product development projects focused on textile dyes and chemicals. Since the implementation, Dr. Schumacher has seen the quality of the research documentation improve considerably. Experiments are documented with a much higher quality and are more detailed.
Moreover, efficient sharing of information within the R&D community between the company’s different sites has been enabled and it is easy to find what other people have done previously. Prior to the introduction of ConturELN, it was often very tedious to find information of the R&D work of the past, as the information was recorded in handwritten paper notebooks.
- We have much more transparency now, our people can see in real time what colleagues in other labs world-wide have done. So we see more interaction between labs and between individual scientists.
Dr. Schumacher continues:
- Knowledge sharing is the key point here, and the speed of access to information. I would also add to this that security has increased because without an ELN people just sent an e-mail with their reports. Today it’s organized thanks to the authorization in ConturELN and also that access is locked.
The most important improvement, however, has been the significant time savings. The whole working procedure has been simplified so that researchers spend less time documenting and doing preparation. The gained time is used in a productive way by carrying out additional experiments which will speed up the development process and shorten the lead time to new product launch.
- These time savings are definitely an essential element. We have restructured our organisation several times during recent years and today we have considerably fewer people in R&D compared to five years ago, while at the same time the challenges have increased and R&D people have taken over additional responsibilities. So, people have more workload on their desks meaning that the more time they can free to work on other projects the better.
For instance, the use of templates saves a lot of time for the scientists. The experiments are also being signed and witnessed promptly.
- The information exchange is much faster and it goes across project borders and that’s a really good step forward. Now we have an exchange between people who work on different projects in different sites, and that’s a big help. Also the information exchange within projects is much better now. You don’t have to send out an e-mail with the information to involved people; you just look in your ELN to see what the other labs have done.
Dr. Schumacher estimates that the efficiency increase is between 7 and 8 percent, bringing significant productivity gains for the company. Payback on the investment in ConturELN as well as necessary equipment enhancements and computer hardware upgrades is less than one year, measured on the financial impact from the mentioned productivity gains.
One of DyStar’s lab technicians, Ms. Nina Grossman, uses ConturELN for live recording of the chemical synthesis of a new dyestuff for cotton dyeing.
ELNs is the future
Not only has ConturELN been well received by the users, who appreciate the user-friendliness and the intuitive and flexible functionalities. DyStar also sees a great potential in using the ELN for automated project cost controlling in the near future.
According to Dr. Schumacher, the transition from a paper-bound notebook system to an electronic one is of course a major change in the way people work in the labs, comparable to the transition that office workers made 20 years ago when switching from paper and pencils to personal computers. But he finds it even more striking that no one wants to go back after the change.
- Not all our people have been familiar with using computers in their daily life. Nevertheless even less experienced PC-users appreciate the benefits. That tells me that the software is good and that it is the only future.
Dr. Schumacher has no doubt that the implementation of electronic lab notebooks will continue to improve creativity, cut development time to new products and eventually increase revenues and facilitate cost control.
- For a research intensive organization, the efficiency increases comes from knowledge sharing and saving time in documentation. We estimate that the efficiency increase will reach ten per cent in the future as the database in ConturELN grows and as we get all the guys up and running.
In the nearest future, ConturELN will be further integrated with DyStar’s analytical systems such as HPLC equipment and screening database, which will even further increase the efficiency. ConturELN will also roll-out to the company’s R&D centres in Asia and other technology areas. This will mean a doubling of the number of scientists using the system.
The fact that the world is entering tougher times financially, has made Dr. Schumacher convinced that ELNs will further penetrate the market even more rapidly, as it will be crucial for companies to save time and money.
- I’m convinced that electronic lab notebooks will be standard within a few years, he says. The way people work with handwritten documentation in the labs is old-style, is just not up to date. For us, implementing electronic lab notebooks was like going from the Stone Age to high tech in a very few weeks.
About DyStar Textilfarben GmbH
DyStar is a world-leading supplier of textile dyes, auxiliaries and services for the textile and leather industries. Textile mills (dyer and finisher) worldwide, manufacturing textiles for well-known brands such as Lacoste, Nike, adidas, Puma and WalMart, rely on DyStars’ innovative products and technologies. Headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, DyStar employs approx. 4,000 worldwide.
www.dystar.com
Five years with ConturELN
Interview with Bo Skoog, CIO, Biovitrum
Five years have passed since Biovitrum set out into unknown territory when they as pioneers implemented an electronic laboratory notebook system in early 2003. A bold decision one might think yet it was the only way to go. Bo Skoog, Chief Information Officer at Biovitrum, shares his thoughts on how ConturELN has revolutionized their way of working and why there is no turning back.
Biovitrum is a pharmaceutical company with operations in Sweden and in the UK. Biovitrum has currently a research portfolio with several projects in clinical and preclinical phases for a number of well defined specialist indications as well as for common diseases within obesity, diabetes, inflammation and eye diseases. Biovitrum develops and produces protein-based drugs on a contractual basis and markets a range of specialist pharmaceuticals primarily in the Nordic countries.
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Being a highly research intensive organization Biovitrum has always faced a tremendous demand on its research documentation.
All work needs to be carefully conducted to provide accurate records of work undertaken and to have clear records in a possible patent dispute.
However, in the beginning of this millennium the company found itself in a precarious situation having an insufficient research documentation procedure,
just as many other research organizations. With all scientists using pen and paper to document their research the disadvantages of their paper-based
documentation system were numerous and damaging in terms of efficiency.
Bo Skoog, Chief Information Officer at Biovitrum, recalls the situation.
– The problems that we faced were manifold. Sometimes you had analytical instruments that generated computer print-outs on thermo paper, or you copied
chromatograms and glued them into your lab book, and in the end it looked like a scrapbook with lots of slips in it. Conducting research documentation on
paper was troublesome and it didn’t live up to all of our demands so we started looking for a system that could provide us with a better knowledge base as
well as a better possibility to collect information. Also, being able to compile all the data concerning a specific project was very difficult.
Everyone worked on their own little part and it was difficult for the manager to get an overview.
The situation became unbearable. Biovitrum scanned the market for a suitable system but in the end chose to develop an entirely new solution together with Contur Software.
A joint project was initiated to develop an electronic laboratory notebook system in an attempt to manage the every-day research in a better and more effective way. It resulted in ConturELN.
An important aspect of Biovitrum’s research is the cooperation between biologists and chemists. Therefore, the mission already from the start was to design a system
that could be used by everyone regardless of discipline.
– Electronic lab notebooks have sneaked into the business gradually, says Bo Skoog. Especially for chemists who perform a lot of repetitive tasks and have
previously used similar systems that supported these operations. But designing something that fits chemists, analysts as well as biologists with modular thinking was something completely new.
Five years have now passed since the introduction of ConturELN in 2003. It has been five years of success. Today, all of Biovitrum’s 350 researchers and scientists across
all scientific disciplines in the R&D department use ConturELN as their main documentation tool. Instead of printing documents and gluing them into the lab notebooks scientists
now record and store information electronically in a fully-searchable, centralized database. And they love it.
– From the beginning we didn’t have our entire laboratory units connected to the system, but the system has gained ground and today there is no one performing laboratory work
without electronic lab notebooks. We have covered the whole company and it has helped us tremendously. Nobody wants to go back to paper, there is no such way back.
That would be like going back in history.
Bo Skoog continues:
– It is also interesting to see that people who have quit their jobs here have brought the idea with them and they wonder why their new employer doesn’t use ELNs.
So, it spreads itself. What we are working on today is how we can use the system even more efficiently by linking to other tools and systems that we have, such as raw data capturing.
What were the major improvement areas after the implementation of ConturELN? Efficiency gains for the scientist. Writing by hand made it difficult to interpret the handwriting,
even one’s own. Now the data was suddenly readable, understandable and comparable. Many of the scientists even expressed: ”It looks so nice and clean”.
Also the search ability, being able to find data in the database and to see what others had done before.
– ConturELN has very much simplified our working day because you can work in your lab and write there and then go back to your office and continue writing,
says Bo Skoog. You always have the system with you. You can also look at other people’s work so there is a source of information that we didn’t have before.
An ELN is like a large bucket of information that is continuously refilled and of course you should take advantage of that.
Thirdly, the possibility to compile information has made it a lot easier for the project managers and the company management to survey the different projects.
– Our project managers can look into the ongoing projects and make compilations of data in a completely different way than before.
You speed up the whole process by instantaneous usage of data. You don’t have any loose ends because an experiment is submitted as soon as it is completed.
Many scientists are entrepreneurs who like to start things, but they are not that fond of completing them. ELN doesn’t restrain free thinking and the outlet
of ideas, but it helps you tie up the loose ends and that’s great.
Even though ConturELN is a highly sophisticated system Bo Skoog points out that it is designed to be extremely user-friendly. Thanks to its intuitive and open
architecture there is no need to make any discipline specific adjustments. The users simply use the pre-designed templates and calculation functions already set-up in the system.
Thus, administration costs are second to none. Nor is there is any need for educational investment. A short initial training is all it takes for the user to be up and running.
– ConturELN is an adjustable system that you can get started with very quickly. You install it, make a few adaptations and then you’re up and running.
One gets a benefit very quickly. And its use grows organically as it is such a successful system that it spreads from user to user.
Bo Skoog, who started his own career as a scientist within analytical biochemistry, has seen a dramatic change over the years in the way scientists document their experiments.
At the time he started researching, in the early 80s; research documentation was merely an attempt to bring order in the papers, before bound paper notebooks there even existed.
Now, he can’t even imagine a future without ELN.
– I believe that all pharmaceutical companies conducting any kind of research will be using electronic lab notebooks in the future. It might take a few years but we’ll get there, I think it is inevitable. I also think that the demands on authenticity and improved quality in research documentation will increase even more in the future, also in the early stages of the research. That is not a problem if you have the system, routines and structured working methods because no scientist is opposed to orderliness as long as they have an outlet for their ideas, and that you are able to have with ConturELN. You must always allow free thinking because if no one is allowed to move outside the fence you might miss something that’s there.
– There are also a lot of discussions going on in the pharma industry about open innovation, that what you discover and the research experiences you make is handed out for everyone to use if it is not of any commercial interest for you. It is possible that in the future electronic lab notebooks could be an intermediary link and spread theses discoveries to other groups such as the academia. Being able to contribute to continued human survival and health was one of the reasons for me becoming a scientist. Biovitrum is now making a strategic shift in its business offering taking the first steps to become a pharmaceutical company with marketing, production and clinical operations where ConturELN will have a central role.
– I see ConturELN as a component in Biovitrum’s future. We have a competitive advantage in comparison to other companies thanks to ConturELN, and we have it already now. Many large companies in the world are still struggling to get started with electronic lab notebooks. We have already taken that step. And now when we are becoming a larger company ConturELN will be a factor of success.