Labs face constant pressure to deliver technical results to support their stakeholders. That pressure can come in the form of fast turnaround times, budget constraints, performance requirements, and regulatory compliance. By examining their internal processes and making use of available data, visual controls, and effective training, labs can make improvements that yield increased efficiency, improved quality, and greater control.
To learn more about how labs can adopt more robust internal processes, we talked with Greg Walker, the managing principal at Life Cycle Engineering and a former global reliability program leader at Pfizer.
Q: From a reliability and maintenance perspective, what are some actions lab managers can take to achieve better harmonization and greater operational efficiency?
To achieve true harmonization, laboratory managers must move beyond the mindset that laboratory operations exist in isolation from the broader operational or manufacturing ecosystem. The laboratory is not an island; it is an integral component of a much larger system. For managers, real success comes from breaking walls between the technical data on your equipment and the actual day-to-day experience of the people operating them.
To accomplish this, I recommend embracing reliability engineering principles, specifically understanding asset criticality and identifying potential points of failure, involving your colleagues throughout the entire process. Additionally, implementing robust preventive maintenance (PM) strategies can be highly effective. These should include well-defined service agreements and guaranteed response times to ensure asset availability.
By shifting away from a reactive “fix-it-when-it-breaks” approach toward a proactive planning and scheduling model, supported by structured maintenance planning, you create a system where the laboratory’s infrastructure and its people reflect the overall health of the organization. This alignment ensures that all elements work in lockstep toward operational excellence.
Q: How should a lab manager begin leveraging existing IoT sensors and AI in their current facility to gain this real-time visibility, and what immediate, tangible benefit will this deliver to their team's daily operations?
Before rushing to implement AI in your facility, the most immediate and impactful improvement comes from mastering visual management. In many labs, technicians intuitively know which assets are the true reliable workhorses and which sit idle or underutilized. Capture this insight with a simple visual management board that tracks asset health, utilization, and upcoming service calls.
For example, monitoring a bank of HPLCs on a marker board can reveal if high-performing units are over-assigned while others remain idle due to minor issues. This low-tech process increases visibility into hidden bottlenecks and identifies assets needing attention, restoring full availability and improving flow. Once a culture of visualizing and reporting potential indicators is established, you can layer in sensors and AI tools to address root causes and enable earlier detection of failures. This approach transforms the lab into a proactive environment where routine check-ins and technician feedback are normalized, building a foundation for reliability and operational excellence.
Q: What is a non-traditional KPI related to equipment or process reliability that lab managers should begin tracking to effectively benchmark their progress toward operational excellence?
In 2026, lab managers should expand their existing metrics and adopt a more comprehensive view of asset performance by monitoring availability, performance, and quality:
- Availability asks whether the asset is ready when needed and successfully completes the analysis without issue.
- Performance measures performance against benchmarks; for example, if a test’s standard execution is one hour, and it actually takes 75 minutes, what caused the delay?
- Quality evaluates anomalies or rejects outside typical standards.
Using these three metrics as a baseline helps managers and technicians identify areas needing improvement, whether that’s asset reliability or a need to standardize and optimize processes. As an added efficiency measure, track calibration performed versus instrument usage. Labs often waste resources calibrating assets that only leave storage cabinets to be calibrated, then put back on the shelf. Aligning calibration schedules with actual seasonal usage can significantly reduce costs and optimize your operational budget.
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Q: What new skills should a lab manager look for when hiring or prioritize for training their existing team to ensure their staff can effectively manage and maintain these new, integrated systems?
A: One of the most critical and often overlooked skills when hiring or training lab technicians is asset ownership. Technicians who move beyond simply running tests to truly understand how equipment works become invaluable team members. During onboarding, emphasize the culture of your laboratory and the importance of developing operator care skills. Explain that colleagues will be trained to identify defects and learn how to address them before they lead to failures. Formal training should empower staff to detect and correct issues early, restoring assets to optimal performance. This engagement is essential because technicians are closest to the equipment and are often the first to spot red flags.
By fostering a culture where every team member feels accountable for system integrity, you ensure both your equipment and your people remain dependable, driving reliability, efficiency, and operational excellence.
Q: For labs with quality control responsibilities, what is the single most critical change they must implement in 2026 to successfully integrate quality assurance with manufacturing operations?
The single most critical change a laboratory can make is implementing an effective reliability maintenance strategy. Ensure equipment is consistently calibrated, maintained, and operating within specifications. This approach minimizes downtime and reduces variability. Structured maintenance records enhance QC documentation and traceability, while training staff on reliability principles builds competency and accountability. This integration of reliability and QC not only guarantees compliance with regulatory standards but also drives consistent product quality, operational efficiency, and audit readiness across manufacturing processes.
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Q: With the threat of enduring US tariffs, manufacturers are expected to leverage US contract manufacturers. How will this impact lab managers’ equipment procurement and maintenance planning decisions?
A: Lab managers should view the current tariff landscape as a unique opportunity to drive domestic efficiency through value stream mapping. By mapping what enters the lab and what exits, managers can pinpoint capacity bottlenecks that restrict throughput. This insight should guide capital procurement decisions and investments in the specific phases of testing that create delays. Clearing these bottlenecks unlocks spare capacity and improves flow for both personnel and equipment. In a market favoring U.S.-based manufacturing, this efficiency can be leveraged as a competitive advantage by marketing excess capacity to companies seeking to onshore their volumes. In doing so, labs transform a regulatory and economic challenge into a growth strategy, reducing costs while expanding operational capabilities.
Using the data available in the lab and the skills of the staff can greatly impact the performance of the lab’s equipment and the quality of the lab’s deliverables. Even small improvements in the process can yield significant savings and performance benefits.
