Scaling Food & Beverage Testing Across Borders: How Mérieux NutriSciences Standardized on OasisLIMS
A global commercial testing network modernizes sample throughput, traceability, and regulatory compliance across its India and Malaysia laboratories with an integrated OasisLIMS, SAP, and instrument-connected platform — including end-to-end finance workflows for quotation, inquiry, and billing.
Client Overview
Mérieux NutriSciences is a global network of commercial testing, inspection, and certification laboratories serving the food and beverage industry, with corporate operations headquartered in Germany and a laboratory footprint that spans manufacturing hubs across Asia, including Malaysia and Mumbai, India. The group's laboratories support food, beverage, and consumer-goods manufacturers with chemical, microbiological, and contaminant testing that underpins product safety, regulatory filings, and export certification.
As client volumes grew and the group's Indian operation (formerly MicroChem, since rebranded MXNS) expanded alongside its Malaysian sister lab, the organization needed a single laboratory platform that could run consistently across both sites — covering not just testing workflows, but the quotation, billing, and invoicing activity that surrounds every sample.
The Challenge
Commercial food and beverage testing labs operate on tight turnaround commitments while carrying the same audit burden as pharmaceutical or clinical facilities — and, as contract labs, they also run a continuous cycle of client inquiries, quotations, and invoicing alongside the science. Ahead of implementing OasisLIMS, Mérieux NutriSciences' India and Malaysia laboratories were facing four compounding pressures:
- High sample throughput: contract testing volumes for chemical, microbiological, and specification-based testing were rising faster than manual, spreadsheet-driven workflows could support, creating bottlenecks in sample login, work allocation, and report turnaround.
- Traceability gaps: results were being transcribed from chromatography, spectroscopy, and balance instruments into spreadsheets by hand, leaving the organization without a defensible, instrument-to-report chain of custody for every result.
- Compliance and multi-site consistency: each lab needed department-wise approval hierarchies, digital signatures, and audit trails that would satisfy accreditation and customer audits, while still allowing country-specific requirements — such as India's GST e-invoicing mandate — to be handled locally.
- Disconnected commercial workflows: client inquiries, rate quotations, and billing were handled outside the laboratory system, so sales, lab operations, and finance were working from separate records — creating manual reconciliation between testing activity, invoicing, and revenue reporting in SAP.
The OasisLIMS Solution
Oasis Infotech implemented OasisLIMS 4.0, a web-based LIMS/ELN, as the common laboratory and commercial backbone for both the India and Malaysia sites, configured around three operational pillars — throughput, traceability, and compliance — plus a finance module that connects the lab directly to SAP.
Streamlined Sample and Work Management
Automatic AR (accession/receipt) number generation gives every sample a unique, trackable identity from intake through final report. A flexible sample test matrix, group tests, and specification limits let staff attach the right panel of tests to each sample in a single step. Automatic allocation of instruments and analysts to incoming work removes manual scheduling and keeps high sample volumes moving through the lab without bottlenecks.
End-to-End Traceability with Instrument Integration
OasisLIMS' O-Link interfacing layer connects directly to laboratory instruments — including GC, GC-MS, HPLC, and balances — capturing results via QR/barcode-linked transfer instead of manual entry, eliminating transcription errors. Every action and record is logged and time-stamped, giving both labs a fully auditable trail of the scientists, instruments, standards, and procedures involved in each analysis, from sample receipt to final Certificate of Analysis. On-screen specification limits and out-of-specification (OOS) indicators flag deviations to analysts at the point of results entry, rather than after the fact.
Built-In Compliance and Multi-Site Governance
Role-based user administration enforces prepared-by/approved-by sign-off and department-wise approval routing (e.g., chemistry vs. microbiology) before any Certificate of Analysis is released. Digital signatures validate the authenticity and integrity of released test results, with reports distributed automatically by email to speed delivery to clients. For the Malaysia site's specific compliance requirements, the platform was extended with an Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) and enhanced track-and-trace reporting, while the India operation retained India-specific features such as automated GST e-invoicing filing, integrated with OasisLIMS through GST API connectivity.
Finance Module: Inquiry, Quotation & Billing
Client inquiries are logged directly in OasisLIMS and converted into rate-based quotations, with Excel-based rate imports allowing sales and lab teams to keep pricing current without manual re-entry. Approved quotations flow directly into sample registration, so every accepted job carries its commercial terms into the lab without a separate handoff between sales and operations. Billing is generated from completed, approved testing activity and integrated with SAP, so invoices reflect actual work performed and post directly into the group's financial records — removing the manual reconciliation that previously sat between the lab and finance.
SAP and Enterprise System Integration
OasisLIMS was integrated with the group's SAP environment using a web-services/SOA-based API layer. Sample activity, quotations, and billing captured in OasisLIMS now flow into SAP for invoicing, chemical and consumable inventory, and financial reporting, giving management real-time visibility into laboratory throughput alongside cost and revenue data. A cloud-ready technical architecture also allows the platform to run over a wide-area network, so the India and Malaysia laboratories operate on a shared LIMS backbone while each retains the flexibility to run on-premise, cloud-hosted, or SaaS infrastructure as local IT policy requires.
Business Impact
- Faster throughput: automatic sample numbering, test-matrix templates, and automated work allocation shortened the path from sample receipt to results entry, helping both labs absorb rising contract-testing volumes without proportional headcount growth.
- Stronger traceability and data integrity: direct instrument-to-LIMS data capture through O-Link removed manual transcription from the results pathway, reducing data-entry errors and strengthening the chain of custody behind every Certificate of Analysis.
- Audit-ready compliance: department-wise approvals, digital signatures, and full activity logging give both sites a defensible, auditable record set for customer and accreditation audits, while India- and Malaysia-specific add-ons meet local regulatory needs without fragmenting the core platform.
- Connected commercial and financial workflows: linking inquiry, quotation, and billing directly to SAP gives finance and lab management a single, real-time view of testing activity, revenue, and cost across both countries, cutting the manual reconciliation that previously separated sales, lab operations, and finance.
Looking Ahead
With a common LIMS and finance backbone now live across India and Malaysia, Mérieux NutriSciences and Oasis Infotech continue to extend the platform — including deeper customer-portal capabilities for real-time sample status and report access, and further instrument interfacing as new analytical equipment is brought online. The architecture is designed to extend to additional facilities in the group's network without re-building the core system for each new site.