Our Experience

LEAN Principles at GEL

GEL has invested in LEAN training and made meaningful process improvements to eliminate waste.

The Challenge

GEL understands the complexity of samples, project requirements, and scheduling difficulties that impact the operation of our laboratory. We know how to meet these critical challenges and ensure a successful project. Laboratories are extremely demanding and complex operations due to:

  • the nature of the materials that are being tested and the associated safety issues;
  • the variation in project specific requirements and detection limits;
  • the challenge to develop new methods while meeting production needs;
  • the preparation of difficult matrices;
  • the extreme fluctuations in workload and resulting staffing and resource allocation issues;
  • the management of the labor force and coordination of client schedules;
  • the precise attention to method details and the detailed documentation required to provide defensible, quality data, and;
  • the successful balance of all of these issues to ultimately deliver quality data on time to our clients.
GEL Services Provided

Continuous improvement is a key component of the GEL Core Values.  One of our Company’s Core Values is “Passion for Excellence”,  we describe this Core Value in the GEL Employee Handbook a “ we strive for continuous improvement and learn from our mistakes”. In late 2014, we increased our focus on continuous improvement with a program we refer to as P3 (Price, Purchasing and Process). Two of the three Ps, "Purchasing" and "Process", are focused on reducing our on-going total costs.  Also, as part of the P3 program, in early 2016, we hosted four days of LEAN training for approximately 50 GEL employees to further train our company on continuous improvement. Since 2016, we have expanded this training to all employees within our laboratory and support groups. The program has been a significant success through the active involvement of our employees identifying and implementing LEAN operating principles within their groups. 


In 2017, we reduced our key variable costs (lab supplies, shipping, waste and office aupplies) to the lowest in 10 years compared to revenue. In addition, we’ve made meaningful process improvements focused on eliminating the Eight Wastes.

The Result

GEL meets these critical challenges and contributes to the success of our clients every day through our focus on LEAN operating principles. We are committed to ensuring that our laboratory is operated efficiently and provides a successful "win-win" cost effective relationship with our clients.

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