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How Tecan Speeds Instrument Service with Artel - Case Study
To help customers maximize uptime and optimize the performance of their automated liquid handlers, Tecan’s Te-Care service program relies on the Artel technology in their QC Kit for volume verifications.
less than 30 Minutes per instrument
Using the QC Kit with Artel’s proprietary technology, a Te-Care service representative can assess the accuracy and precision of a system’s volume transfers quickly and efficiently.
1 – 96 Dispensing tips individually evaluated
Unlike gravimetry, Artel’s technology, provides performance measurements for each dispensing channel so customers can have complete confidence in their instrument.
>1,000s Hours saved
The speed and simplicity of Artel’s technology means that the Te-Care service program saves time, maximizing system uptime for Tecan’s customers.
- Product used: Artel’s Ratiometric Photometry technology in Tecan’s QC Kit
- Application: Calibration, Volume verification
As a leading provider of liquid handling workstations for life science laboratories, Tecan has thousands of systems installed in labs across the globe.
To help keep these systems as reliable, productive, and precise as possible, the company offers customers the Te-Care service program.
An important part of this service is ensuring that volume transfers are within desired specifications.
However, verifying volume transfers for liquid handling workstations can be time-consuming and/or labor-intensive, leading to prolonged instrument downtime.
For example, gravimetry-which relies on a high-performance balance to measure the volume added to a multi-well plate-is slow, labor-intensive, and cannot provide data for individual dispensing tips.
“Home-brewed” dye-based systems are also time-consuming to implement as the reagents require extensive standardization and calibration.
To speed volume verification, Tecan turned to Artel’s proprietary Ratiometric Photometry technology, which is incorporated into the QC Kit used by the Te-Care service program and offered as a turn-key QC solution to customers.
The QC Kit can quickly verify the precision of each liquid handler dispensing tip with traceable, standardized measurement data, giving customers complete confidence in the performance of their equipment.
Tecan takes pride in the strength of its service organization and its ability to provide solutions that meet the requirements of its customers. The Te-Care service program supports Tecan’s automated liquid handler customers with installation and operation qualification, routine scheduled maintenance, and repair services.
One of Tecan’s service options is precision and accuracy verification, which helps life science labs save time and resources while meeting internal quality standards and external regulatory requirements. However, performing volume verifications can take a great deal of time, resulting in liquid handler downtime and lost productivity for the customer. To maximize instrument uptime while ensuring quality, Te-Care service performs volume verifications with Tecan’s QC Kit, a product which incorporates Artel’s proprietary Ratiometric Photometry technology in co-branded consumables.
Artel’s technology fits seamlessly within the support program of Tecan for a number of reasons, including its ability to verify the precision of liquid handling and multichannel pipetting arms within Tecan’s manufacturing specifications as well as pipetting accuracy; its applicability to automated liquid handling systems ranging from 1 to 384 dispensing tips; and its ability to generate measurement data on a tip-by-tip basis. Also, because the QC Kit is easy to use and performs volume measurements in minutes, it has helped Tecan improve the efficiency of its service offering.
Most importantly, Artel’s technology enables measurements that are traceable to NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology). This means that the data derived from one lab that uses the QC Kit to verify liquid handler performance can be compared with the data from another lab that also uses the QC Kit, ensuring liquid handling consistency across separate locations. The QC Kit is, in effect, a stable, unchanging yardstick – a standard that can be employed at labs across Tecan’s life sciences customer base.
For Tecan, the QC Kit with Artel’s technology hits all the high points required for a liquid handling verification service offering: NIST traceability, portability, ease of use, robustness to withstand shipping to customer locations—all with the backing and reputation of Artel.
