3,610 Grades, Zero Manual Entry: How OMS's Acceptance Criteria Database Works

One of the least-discussed but most time-consuming parts of implementing a laboratory information management system is building the acceptance criteria. Before a LIMS can tell you whether a tensile test result passes or fails, someone has to enter the acceptance criteria — the minimum and maximum values for every property, for every grade, against every applicable standard. For a testing lab working across structural steel, pressure vessels, fasteners, and pipe, this is not a small task.

It is also error-prone. Acceptance criteria entered manually can be wrong, outdated, or inconsistent between different people who set them up at different times. A lab that discovers its LIMS has been evaluating AS 3678 Grade 350 results against an old revision of the standard — and has been issuing certificates accordingly — has a significant problem on its hands.

OMS takes a different approach. The Acceptance Criteria Database is built in, pre-populated, and maintained by OMS. It ships with 3,610 active material grades already loaded.

The real cost of manual acceptance criteria entry

Labs that have implemented other LIMS platforms know the pattern. The software arrives, and then begins the project of populating it. Test methods, acceptance criteria, grade libraries, chemical element limits — all of it needs to be entered, verified, and tested before the system can be used in production. Depending on the scope of the lab's testing, this phase can take weeks or months. During that time, testing continues on the old system — or on paper — and the two run in parallel.

The risks are structural, not just logistical:

• Transcription errors. A minimum elongation of 22% entered as 2% will pass results that should fail. These errors are difficult to detect because the system produces a result — it just produces the wrong one.
• Outdated criteria. Standards are revised. AS 3678 has had multiple revisions. If the acceptance criteria in the LIMS reflect a superseded version, every test result evaluated against them carries a compliance risk.
• Incomplete coverage. Grades that haven't been entered yet can't be selected. Technicians either wait, use a workaround, or manually evaluate results outside the system — which defeats the purpose of having a LIMS.
• No source traceability. Manually entered criteria often have no record of which revision of which standard they came from. When an assessor asks, the answer is "we entered them during implementation" — which is not a satisfying audit trail.

What the OMS Acceptance Criteria Database contains

The database covers four areas of acceptance criteria, all pre-loaded and linked to the relevant grades:

Mechanical properties — 3,610 grades

Every grade in the database carries its mechanical property acceptance criteria — minimum and maximum values for UTS, 0.2% proof stress (and 0.5%, 1% where applicable), ReL and ReH yield stress, elongation (both round and rectangular specimen), reduction of area, and hardness. Where applicable, derived values including carbon equivalent (CE and IIW), PREN, and API Rt0.5/Rm ratio are also included. Young's modulus is recorded where specified by the standard.

Chemical composition — 2,699 grades, 26,000+ records

Chemical composition limits are stored element by element — 51 unique elements in total, from the standard C, Mn, Si, P, S through to Cr, Ni, Mo, Cu, Nb, V, Ti, Al, B, and N, including compound limits where standards specify them (Cr+Mo+Ni, Nb+V, and similar). Each element has its own minimum and maximum, with notes for exceptions. This structure means OMS can evaluate a full chemical analysis against the grade's specification in one operation.

Charpy impact strength — 1,472 grades, 4,200+ records

Impact acceptance criteria are stored by test temperature and specimen size — full-size (10×10 mm), and sub-size (7.5, 5, and 2.5 mm). Both individual minimum and average minimum absorbed energy values are recorded, along with lateral expansion where specified. This covers the multi-temperature and multi-specimen-size structure that many AS and EN standards require.

Fastener and nut acceptance criteria

For laboratories testing mechanical fasteners, proof force and ultimate tensile force values are pre-loaded by bolt/stud/screw size — M12 through to M100 and above — covering AS 4291.1, ASTM A193, A307, and F1554, and ISO 898. Nut proof force data is available in both kN and lbf, covering metric and imperial sizes under AS 4291.2 and ASTM A194.

Standards coverage

The database is weighted toward Australian Standards — 65% of grades are AS or AS/NZS — reflecting the primary regulatory and accreditation environment of NATA-accredited testing laboratories. This includes the full range of structural steel (AS 3678, AS 3679), pressure vessel plate (AS 1548), hollow sections (AS 1163), pipe and tube (AS 1074, AS 1579), castings (AS 2074), fasteners (AS 4291), and rebar (AS/NZS 4671).

The remaining 35% covers the international standards that Australian labs commonly test against: ASTM (481 grades), ISO (56 grades), EN and BS EN (96 grades), and API (27 grades including API 5L line pipe from X42 to X80 and API 5CT casing and tubing). Smaller counts of DIN, GB/T, SAE, AMS, and proprietary grades round out the coverage.

How the Acceptance Criteria Database links to test records

When a technician creates a test record in OMS and selects a material grade, the system queries the Acceptance Criteria Database and retrieves the applicable limits for that grade. These limits are embedded directly in the test record before any results are entered.

As the technician enters results, OMS evaluates each value against the retrieved limits in real time. Out-of-specification results are flagged immediately — not after the report is generated, not after the approver has signed off, but at the point of entry. This catches errors early, when they are easiest to investigate and correct.

The grade, the acceptance criteria that were applied, and the source standard document are all recorded against the test result in the audit trail. A year later, when a client queries a result or an assessor asks how the pass/fail determination was made, the answer is in the record — not in someone's memory of what they looked up at the time.

This is the same principle that makes automated calibration due date management effective: the control operates at the point of action, not as a retrospective check.

ISO/IEC 17025 and acceptance criteria traceability

ISO/IEC 17025 Clause 7.2 requires that acceptance criteria be defined before testing and be traceable to the applicable method or standard. This is a straightforward requirement in principle, but it creates a practical challenge for labs that maintain their acceptance criteria manually: how do you demonstrate that the criteria applied to a test result three years ago reflected the correct revision of the correct standard at the time?

The OMS Acceptance Criteria Database addresses this directly. Each grade's criteria are sourced from the standard document, and that document reference is recorded against the test result. The traceability chain runs from result to acceptance criteria to source document — a chain that can be reconstructed at any time from the audit trail alone.

For NATA-accredited laboratories, this traceability is particularly important because assessors check it. Acceptance criteria that appear in the system but cannot be traced to a specific revision of a specific standard are a finding. Acceptance criteria that are automatically retrieved from a documented, maintained database — with the source referenced in the test record — are not.