Process Analytics (Bottlenecks, Sample Flow)

Does anyone here use software for tracking sample flow rate across protocols? How do you model your process volume, if at all? When I worked in commercial-scale manufacturing these tools were incredibly valuable for estimating overall production rate. I haven’t heard of anything similar for lab automation although I can imagine many of the same principles would apply.

If you don’t have any software for this, would that be useful to you? What features would you like to see?

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I’d be curious to know, what software tools did you use in manufacturing?

We used Intelligen SchedulePro which is basically a mathematical Gantt chart for batch processes and suite/ facility-scale modeling. Many use Excel for the same purpose. And there are also many solutions for gathering process metrics in real time from automation equipment.

We are in process of integrating workbooks and in-script executables to track plates, samples, independent reagent volumes, tips, moves, cycle time, crashes, recoveries, and interventions.

Ideally, this will feed into a real database so we can predict downtime and forecast utilization, but for now it’ll just feed into excel…

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Are you trying to feed a SQL DB?

Usually this is the way to go if your IT group will support it.

@Stefan I think grabbing in real time (or near end of run) is perhaps the easiest to implement. And mostly because I am unfamiliar with the software in that space BUT I can easily feed a DB with any info I deem important. And I don’t mean just start and end times. You can setup a DB that accepts process metrics akin to detection values, hardware data or environmental factors.

With scale, the minor metrics become essential to reduce troubleshooting time or anticipate purchases or issues before they become systemic problems.

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Our (GeNovu’s) sample tracking system tracks all of the metadata about automated and manual runs (robots, barcodes, errors, etc.) and presents it to the user in different ways.

For example the Run History dashboard groups all of the runs within a specific day and can be expanded to show granular run data such as number of Samples and Plates, down to the individual transfers in the Action Log. There are other tools to query this Action Logger data as well.

This deployment was for a Covid screening lab but it is repurposed in other environments. In this example the data is pushed from multiple Hamilton Vantages in real-time.

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From what I hear Aspentech ( Aspen Plus and HYSYS) are well known process simulators widely used in chemical engineering. (and are competitors with SchedulePro) Could be worth looking into for analytic solutions. Hope this helps.

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Really interesting. Is this a custom platform? I am currently playing around with my own version of something this (a side project), would be interesting to learn more about yours.

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@Gareth you should check us out too https://www.artificial.com/.

Ok thats the end of my commercial :slight_smile:

Ha!, yes I know of artificial and your digital twins etc, was a little unsure from your website how it could help us. Maybe we could setup a call.

Our Sample Tracker/Action Logger started as a custom platform when Covid hit for a very large testing lab in late 2020. It’s now evolved into a complete enterprise solution after several iterations and is now running in several other domains, including regulated environments. Feel free to reach out to Kyle.Cook@Genovu.com if you’d like to know more or check out www.GeNovu.com.