SNAPSHOT
Customer: AmSpec GroupIndustry: Testing, Inspection and Certification (TIC) Sector Region: Global LocationsUse cases: BLISS SQC+, Instrument Pro, Laboratory Efficiency, Data Automation
About AmSpec
AmSpec is a testing, inspection, and certification company serving the energy, chemicals, agricultural, minerals, and environmental industries. With laboratories across multiple continents, their work sits at the center of some of the most time-sensitive transactions in the energy sector, such as custody transfers and product exchanges, where the accuracy and speed of test results have direct commercial consequences.
The Challenge
AmSpec's legacy quality control system wasn't up to date for the current industry compliance needs. It often had questionable data, no interconnectivity across sites, and gave management little visibility into what was happening at the analyst level or accross the system.
The manual workload on analysts at their largest facility (HTC in Houston, TX) was a particular problem. AmSpec's Houston Technical Center (HTC) serves as the company's USGC flagship facility and one of the world's largest independent testing laboratories.
Internally, getting results from an instrument to a customer required manually transferring data from printouts, running calculations externally, and capturing traceability information manually. Each of those steps added time and introduced the possibility of error. For a company whose customers rely on that data to make decisions about product movements worth millions of dollars, the margin for error is essentially zero.
AmSpec needed a statistical quality control solution that they could quickly implement and scale. They found that Datacor's BLISS SQC+ (formerly QC/PLUS) could handle the complexity of their operation and scale across their global lab network.
WHY DATACOR
AmSpec looked at other systems before partnering with Datacor.
Beyond the product itself, AmSpec needed a vendor that would respond when something needed to change. Datacor's ability to customize features and turn around software updates quickly was a meaningful factor in the decision and something that has continued to hold true through the relationship.
"None of them seemed to have the native features and native understanding of what our needs were as Datacor [SQC+] could." - Michael Bailey, VP Western Hemispheres
The Solution
AmSpec started with Datacor in 2021, initially implementing SQC+ in a limited deployment to satisfy a regulatory requirement. The early results were strong enough that they expanded across their full global network of 200+ facilities.
From there, AmSpec added Instrument Pro to directly interface their instruments with the system. The goal was straightforward: get as close to a zero-error lab environment as possible by removing manual data entry from the equation entirely. Rather than an analyst transcribing a result from a printout, the data moves directly from the instrument into SQC+, cleaner, faster, and with no opportunity for transcription error in between.
"It was a huge jump from our legacy technology to something that could support us growing substantially and future-proofing our quality control." - Michael Bailey, VP Western Hemispheres
The Results
The most immediate impact was on analyst time. With instrument data flowing automatically and reporting handled by the system, analysts could spend their time on actual analysis rather than data wrangling. As Bailey notes: "We bring analysts into our labs, and the more time that they can be analysts, the better their time is spent."
Turnaround time improved as well, which matters directly to AmSpec's customers. Their data feeds custody transfers and product exchanges that can't wait. Getting results out faster strengthens those customer relationships in a practical, measurable way.
On the operational side, having SQC+ and Instrument Pro on a single platform replaced a fragmented set of tools that weren't talking to each other.
Bailey describes the consolidation of SQC+ as "an accelerator of the ROI," with the productivity gains from the analyst alone justifying the investment.
The real-time, remote visibility AmSpec now has across their global network is something its previous system couldn't come close to providing.
Schedule a free consultation with Datacor BLISS SQC+ experts today.
