Analytical testing leader cuts turnaround time and balances analyst workloads with SWARM
How Industrial Labs achieved 32% faster turnaround and 97% more balanced analyst workloads by moving from manual, spreadsheet driven scheduling to SWARM ENGINE.
CUSTOMER
About the customer
Industrial Labs is a laboratory services organization responsible for managing complex testing workflows across teams of laboratory analysts. As testing volumes fluctuate daily, balancing workloads while maintaining turnaround times is critical to operational performance.
Industry
Analytical testing, food and agriculture
Focus
Sample testing and analyst workforce scheduling
Region
North America
Use Cases
Workforce scheduling, workload balancing, task assignment optimization
CHALLENGE
Before SWARM, scheduling relied on manual planning and heavy Excel macros, cumbersome to maintain and slow to adapt to seasonal spikes or unexpected staff shortages. This created a few recurring problems for the lab:
Uneven task distribution: Work concentrated on certain analysts rather than spreading evenly across the team, based largely on tribal knowledge and individual preference rather than a defined system.
Inconsistent turnaround: Completion times varied widely from batch to batch, with some samples taking far longer than others to close out.
Manual, non-repeatable prioritization: Assignment decisions depended on the judgment of whoever was scheduling that day, making the process hard to standardize or scale as sample volume grew.
Industrial Labs needed a way to assign work that adapted automatically to shifting conditions while keeping the process fair, predictable, and fast.
A manual scheduling process that could not keep pace with demand
Model the analyst workforce and workload
SWARM ENGINE was configured around Industrial Labs' actual operating constraints, including analyst skills, capacity, training requirements, and daily sample volume, to reflect how work really moves through the lab.
Generate optimized daily assignments
Using this model, SWARM ENGINE produces optimized daily schedules that maximize completed tasks while balancing workload across the analyst pool, replacing manual, ad hoc scheduling with a systematic, repeatable process.
Build resilience into scheduling
The system is designed to adapt to disruptions such as sudden staff absences or sample spikes, so the schedule can rebalance automatically rather than requiring a full manual rework.
Establish a structured feedback loop
As users onboarded to SWARM ENGINE, Industrial Labs established a feedback channel with team leads to collect, filter, and consolidate analyst input before routing it back to the SWARM project team, keeping the rollout tightly aligned to how the lab actually works.
Powered by the SWARM ENGINE
The SWARM ENGINE is our agentic AI optimization product that solves complex operational problems such as labor planning, logistics, and allocation.
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IMPACT
Over a benchmark window from mid-March to late April 2026, SWARM ENGINE was measured directly against Industrial Labs' historical assignment approach:
97% more balanced workload distribution : Backed by a Gini coefficient improvement from 0.264 to 0.008, near perfect equity across all analysts.
32% faster turnaround times : Average completion time dropped from 6.0 days to 4.1 days, with the maximum time delta falling from 21 days to 8 days.
97% reduction in workload variance : Coefficient of variation improved from 0.474 to 0.015, giving analysts a consistent, predictable share of tasks each day rather than unpredictable spikes.
Systematic, defensible prioritization : Assignment decisions now follow operational logic that respects analyst capacity, preferences, and training constraints, replacing scheduling that depended on individual judgment alone.
These results reflect the benchmark period, and Industrial Labs is now working toward validating them at full production scale across live workloads.
Early benchmark results, measured against Industrial Labs' historical workflow
WHY SWARM
Why Industrial Labs chose SWARM
Built for complex lab operations
SWARM ENGINE handles the real-world constraints of analytical testing, including analyst skills, training requirements, capacity limits, and shifting sample volume.
Fair and consistent by design
The optimization approach directly targets equity of workload, not just speed, giving analysts a more predictable day to day experience.
Clear path from pilot to production
With onboarding largely complete and a structured feedback loop in place, Industrial Labs has a defined path to bring these benchmark gains into everyday operations.
Looking ahead with AVA
As SWARM AVA is proliferated across the lab, Industrial Labs will also gain faster, more consistent access to operational data, extending the benefits beyond scheduling into day-to-day decision making.
can do for your
lab operations
Talk with our team about your own workforce scheduling, capacity planning, or turnaround time challenges, and see how SWARM can help you balance workload before you scale.
