In-House Pipette Calibration: The Lean Way
By Artel | Case Study
Situation
When your tests can impact criminal cases, help labs confirm that a sample belongs to a specific patient, or help verify or refute paternity, data quality matters. Your answers can’t be wrong. Knowing that your pipettes are performing within specifications is a critical part of ensuring data quality, but for Sorenson Genomics, managing pipette calibration was a challenge.
Challenge
The team at Sorenson had been sending out their handheld pipettes for calibration, but were plagued with problems–their pipettes weren’t always returned in a timely fashion, pipettes were sometimes damaged during transit back to their labs, certificates were not immediately available and their staff spent large amounts of time prepping, shipping, and receiving pipettes that needed calibration.
Solution
After investigating different pipette calibration services, the team at Sorenson decided to analyze the process using LEAN principles. With this approach, they realized how much waste there was in their current system–sending pipettes offsite for calibration–and realized they could save time, money, and labor by bringing pipette calibration in house and using Artel’s PCS Calibration System. In addition, because they removed the uncertainty around the pipette’s environment in transit, they had more confidence in the performance of their calibrated pipettes.