OMV Aktiengesellschaft, or OMV, is Austria’s largest listed industrial company, and boasts group sales of EUR 23 bn and a workforce of more than 20,000 employees in 2018.
OMV is a leader of the market in both Central and Eastern Europe. Active in both Romania and Austria, OMV offers a rich and balanced international portfolio in both the fields of Exploration and Production.
System Sought
When OMV acquired the major share of Petrom, two specialized internal laboratories became available within E&P, with responsibilities to their local market, and on occasion, the OMV branch office. The next step in supporting the harmonization of lab operations, after major equipment investments for ICPT Campina were done to adjust the analytical standards to the existing ones within Gänserndorf laboratory, was to obtain and maintain a common approach for data management.
Management was able to isolate and identify that requirement, and continued through an assessment of the current situation as concerned data management in both LEP-OMV and ICPT-Petrom labs. This assessment chiefly concentrated on fluid analysis (specifically oil analysis, pressure, volume, water analysis, gas analysis, instrumental analysis, and temperature analysis).
Consequently, OMV released a request to several LIMS vendors and were contacted in return by LabVantage. Thanks to conference calls and web demonstrations, the sales process was conducted entirely online, meaning that LabVantage did not have to actually make the trip to visit the headquarters of OMV.
System Selected
OMV selected LabVantage in June 2011, thanks to the fact that the LIMS offered by LabVantage perfectly suited OMV’s specific requirements and needs. The project began in Vienna, just two months later in August 2011. The fall saw further workshops held across Vienna, Austria and Campina, the latter of which is 90 km north of the Romanian capital. November saw a further step; the Functional Requirements Specifications signed off.
The browser-based LIMS enabled global usage in multiple countries and labs, rendering it easier for OMV’s IT department to support it. Another key feature of LabVantage for OMV was its ability to easily interface with their other systems, as well as its inbuilt and configurable translation tool.
System Delivered
LabVantage was able to understand the specific business needs of OMV, and help to implement a solution which would meet all the necessary requirements. In December 2011, the core system was complete, the system tested in early 2012, and information on the external interfaces and reports was gathered. Data from a variety of old systems and Excel spreadsheets were both migrated to the new LIMS, with the support of LABVANTAGE.
The spring saw the implementation of the agreed interfaces, reports and data migration, and all UAT tests were run in early spring of 2012. The system underwent one final round of issue resolution, as well as change requests, and went live on the production system just 11 months from the project’s commencement on July 16th. LabVantage’s project team visited the Bucharest Petrom head office in August, in order to provide some final training and to have a project close-out.
Now, the system is used to great success within both the Romanian and Austrian laboratories, thanks to its high reliability, ease of use and 24-hour access from any PC on the network. These qualities have provided OMV with improved efficiency of analysis of their exploration test data, as well as an increase in the report quality and analysis of data.
This information has been sourced, reviewed and adapted from materials provided by LabVantage Solutions, Inc.
For more information on this source, please visit LabVantage Solutions, Inc.