[labnetwork] Equipment reservation efficiencies

[Nava Ariel-Sternberg]

Hi Vito, 

 

Since we’re just opening our clean room back after a long renovation, it’s hard to have tool reservation efficiency numbers but we’ve had this problem in the past and what we did to fight it is to randomly check on highly popular tools and compare reservations to actual use. If we found a big difference we would email the user and copy the PI. The big offenders got warnings and that was effective in the sense that they became more mindful of the reservation time. We also ask them to update their reservation if they finish using the tool sooner. 

 

-Nava

 

 

Nava Ariel-Sternberg, Ph.D.

Director of CNI Shared Facilities

Columbia University

530 w120th st., NY 10027

Room 1015/MC 8903

Office: 212-854-9927

Cell: 201-562-7600

 

​

 

From: labnetwork-bounces at mtl.mit.edu [mailto:labnetwork-bounces at mtl.mit.edu] On Behalf Of Vito Logiudice
Sent: Friday, July 14, 2017 4:23 PM
To: labnetwork at mtl.mit.edu
Subject: [labnetwork] Equipment reservation efficiencies

 

Dear Colleagues,

 

We have struggled for some time now with equipment reservations which tend to be much greater than equipment use times. This is especially problematic on some of our most popular tools. 

 

For instance, records for the past 7 day period show an enable (or use) time for our popular e-beam evaporator of 86 hours while the tool was reserved for a total of 192 hours during this period. This translates into a tool reservation efficiency of 45%; this seems very poor to me. 

 

I can appreciate that it can be difficult to estimate how much time one might need on any given tool. However, I’m inclined to think that a robust and well-maintained tool with well understood and documented processes (as is the case for this particular deposition system) should allow our membership to plan their work accurately enough so that the tool’s reservation efficiency should remain consistently above 75% or so. 

 

If this is a parameter that you happen track for your operations, I would appreciate hearing what your typical reservation efficiency range might be for some of your most popular tools. I would also appreciate hearing your thoughts on what you might have done in the past to improve this performance parameter for these particularly popular tools.

 

Thank you for any insights. All feedback is welcome.

 

Best regards,

Vito

--

Vito Logiudice  MASc, P.Eng.

Director, Quantum NanoFab

University of Waterloo

Lazaridis QNC 1207

200 University Avenue West

Waterloo, ON           Canada N2L 3G1

Tel.: (519) 888-4567  ext. 38703

Email: vito.logiudice at uwaterloo.ca <mailto:vito.logiudice at uwaterloo.ca> 

Website: https://fab.qnc.uwaterloo.ca

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mtl.mit.edu/pipermail/labnetwork/attachments/20170717/b1872c5a/attachment.html>