Acquired labs on one report format, mapped before anyone switches.

After a deal closes, someone sets the acquired lab's templates beside yours and works out what each field becomes: header, customer block, item description, results table, statements, signature block, numbering. It often lands on the quality manager, between audits.

In the proof of concept, AI does that on copies and writes a field-by-field map and a difference list. It then redrafts the acquired lab's closed jobs in your format, and that lab's signatory compares each redraft with the report it issued, which stays exactly as it is.

The header hides the first trap. ISO/IEC 17025 asks every report for the lab's name and address and, separately, the location where the work was done, including a customer's site or a temporary or mobile facility. Put the acquired lab's work on your letterhead and your head office address can quietly replace the site that did the testing. Accreditation can be tied to sites too: NVLAP limits its symbol on reports to the locations named on the scope, so the symbol on your template doesn't reach a site your scope leaves out.

Accreditation statements rarely carry over. The acquired lab may hold its own certificate from a different accreditation body, with that body's symbol rules. Under ILAC R7 the right to use the ILAC MRA mark isn't transferable; a lab uses the combined mark only with its own accreditation body's permission. NVLAP wants its lab code wherever its name is cited for accredited status, a statement that the report can't be used to claim product certification or endorsement by NVLAP, NIST or the U.S. Government, and its symbol standing alone, not merged into another logo. The map lists each statement on both sides and the certificate it belongs to.

Then the smaller statements. One template says the results relate only to the items tested; the other leaves it out. One carries the line about reproducing the report only in full. Where the lab didn't take the sample, the standard wants the report to say the results apply to the sample as received. Some customers may have agreed to simplified reports, which 17025 allows if whatever is left off stays readily available. The difference list names each of these and every customer whose agreed format would change.

Numbering needs a decision, not a guess. The acquired lab may number by year and sequence, by job and sample, or by certificate alone, and mark a revision with a suffix or a fresh number. Issued reports keep the numbers they went out under, and the standard keeps every issued report as a technical record. So the map shows both schemes side by side and asks the quality manager how new reports from the acquired site should be numbered.

Switching templates is a change to manage. Under 17025, changes to a laboratory information management system, configuration included, are authorized, documented and validated before use. If your new template lives in your LIMS, that covers it, and the map and redrafts are evidence your quality manager can use, not a substitute for that validation. Your reviewer will check that every old field lands somewhere, that redrafted values match the issued ones exactly, and that no statement claims an accreditation the acquired site doesn't hold.

After a yes, and once your quality manager is ready to switch, new reports from the acquired lab are drafted in your format for about 30 days.

Each one is reviewed and signed by that lab's own authorized people before it is issued, just as it would be without the AI.

The difference list stays open through the run for anything the redrafts missed. No other job starts in those 30 days.