Quality assured right at its origin...
LASTRADA - the standard software solution
for construction materials testing.

LASTRADA is the standard software for construction materials testing laboratories working with asphalt, concrete, mineral aggregates and soils.

News:

The new version 4.1.7. includes several new functionalities. The most important ones are the following:

Workflow control through Testing Programs

All laboratories offering services to external clients will be please to learn about a new workflow control variant in LASTRADA. This variant offers an additional possibility for controlling the complete workflow of contract creation, sample registration, test data entry and invoicing. The concept of testing programs coexists now with the contract/sub-contract concept.

While testing, organised in contracts/sub-contracts, gives the highest possible level of flexibility when it comes to structuring the laboratory work, the new concept of testing programs and testing packages offers the highest level of automation:
- Automated sample registration and tracking
- Automated test location registration
- Automated management of contract-related product lists
- Automated creation of testing registers
- Automated report generation
- Automated invoicing


Support of New Testing Standards
It goes without saying that all tests suported by LASTRADA conform to the European Testing Standards. Additonally, our maintenance philosophy incudes the support of testing according to the national and regional requirements. During the past three months we have successively extended over thirty tests to provide data entry, evaluation and data output according to American (ASTM) and British (BS) standards.

Extension of Cement Testing
We have completed the cement testing module to support not only tests that are necessary for FPC but the complete range of physical and chemical test of the EN 196 series of standards.

Many more customer requests have been implemented. Please find the details in the ReadMe-file of your Update Package.

LASTRADA on the road

At this year's conference we have presented a paper about the benefits of interfaces between asphalt laboratories, plant control systems and ERP system. Please find the abstract of the paper below. If you are interested in receiving a copy of the paper, do net hesitate to contact us!

The Integration of Asphalt Quality Control with Sales and Production
- on the Pivotal Role of an Integrated Laboratory Information Management System

Abstract

Intra-company communication has always been one focal point for the realisation of efficiency and quality gains. Nonetheless, because of being equipped with a stand-alone QC-software, the laboratory, i.e. quality control, has never reached its full potential as a service provider for the production management, the sales department and the controlling department.

We would like to present the details and effects of an automatic exchange of information between a centralised and integrated laboratory system on the one side and the plant control and financial software system (Enterprise Resource Planning system), on the other side. In three parts we will illustrate the practical consequences of QC integration: 1) existing and practically applied interface variants between the laboratory system and ERP systems, 2) existing interfaces between laboratory system and plant control systems and 3) a co-operation between software developer JPSC and asphalt plant manufacturer Ammann to develop a standardised interface between the integrated central-database system LASTRADA and the AS1 plant control system.

Some of the questions answered are: How can a bi-directional interface which transfers mix recipes and production data between laboratory system and plant control system add to sustainable and efficient use of constituents? What key information can be provided for the technical management to increase production quality if quality data from the laboratories and production data from the plant control systems is combined in a central database? In terms of quality assurance, what are the benefits of an automatic interface that provides the bill of materials and key properties of new mix designs for the sales and controlling departments?

3 December 2008, Košice, Slovakia:
LASTRADA-Seminar

In co-operation with Technický a skúšobný ústav stavebný, n. o. -
Building Testing and Research Institute

"European Standards for Asphalt Factory Production Control - Efficient Laboratory Work with LASTRADA"

On December 3rd, 2008, we would like to present to you different solutions for Quality Control on the basis of the LASTRADA System. We will choose several examples from our Asphalt Clients to illustrate how laboratory work is organised in Switzerland, Austria and Germany and we would like to discuss with you the implications of the national implementations of the European Standards for your daily laboratory work.

On the basis of LASTRADA we will demonstrate and discuss:

- Software-based Asphalt Design, Asphalt Type Testing and Asphalt Declaration (EN 13108, Part 1 to 8 and 20)
Optimisation Tools, Automatic Calculation Tools, Digital Signature

- Factory Production Control Testing (EN 13108-21 Chap. 5 and 6))
Testing of Asphalt Mixtures, Bitumen, Aggregates, Reclaimed Asphalt and Cores

- Operating Compliance Level and Automatic Inspection Schedules (EN 13108-21, A.3)
Central Supervision of all Plants, Detailed Analysis of the OCL

- Laboratory Management (EN 13108-21 Chap. 8)
Maintenance and Calibration of Equipment

- Preparation and Output of Test Certificates and Statistical Documentation
LASTRADA Report Editor, Intelligent Data Analysis Tool (IDA Asphalt)

- Sample Management, Document Control, Staff Administration (EN 13108-21 Chap. 4, 7, 9, 10)
Traceability of Work, Reproducibility of Results, Security Schemes

We would be glad to see you in Košice on December 3rd, 2008!