At Vitaquest, having a state-of-the-art laboratory staffed by the sharpest and most talented scientists in the supplement manufacturing industry has been an invaluable resource that has set us apart from our competitors for over four decades. A firm commitment to science and quality has allowed us to lead the industry in supplement product development, creating more than 3,000 new products for our customers every year.
However, this success brings a few challenges—though they are nothing our innovation experts at Vitaquest cannot handle.
The Challenges of Supplement Product Development
Over 7,000 samples inundate our lab each year, including several analytical tests, as well as thousands of raw materials and receipts in our database. Meanwhile, our lab operates independently off our inventory system. An extreme volume of manual data handling is vulnerable to human error at each stage in the process, potentially weakening the link in our data integrity program.
Challenges like these lead many other supplement manufacturers to cut corners when it comes to quality and innovation. After all, doing so makes their job easier. However, we have taken pride in never taking shortcuts. Instead, we jump through any hoop necessary to present you with high-quality supplements developed efficiently and safely. Sometimes the solutions to these challenges require some creative thinking—something our team here is an expert in!
Introducing NuGenesis® LIMS
After searching tirelessly for a better approach, our Quality Assurance team has provided a solution: NuGenesis® LIMS (Laboratory Information Management System). This digital system uniquely combines synergistic data, workflow, and sample management capabilities to support our entire supplement product development lifecycle. All the data our lab needs is a centralized location, not several dozen filing cabinets or storage rooms.
LIMS drastically increases our lab’s efficiency, accountability, and productivity while simplifying our laborious manual procedures. Since implementing this new supplement manufacturing solution, we have:
- Input data for 3,000+ products.
- Cut Certification of Analysis (COA) lead times from weeks to days.
- Brought transcription errors down to 0.
- Reduced status report time from hours to minutes.
Not to mention, this solution has drastically improved our sustainability efforts by eliminating hundreds of thousands of sheets of paper. A typical COA report is roughly a ½” thick. In total, we generated about 1,200 feet of paper per year. If you stack up all that paper, the tower would be as high as the Empire State Building! Since turning to LIMS, we have been able to get rid of 96 filing cabinets (and counting!).
Investing in Our Future
As we expand into a greater organization, our systems will need to evolve with us. We have already seen this evolution come to life with our new drum inverters and ODT delivery system. Our team continues to overcome countless hurdles together by finding innovative ways to improve our business processes so that you, our customers, can continue to have a flawless product development experience from concept to completion.
We look forward to sharing more success stories as we continue to invest in our future and prove what it means to Deliver What’s Next in the nutraceutical industry. Contact us to join us on this journey.
