Automated DNA Drying Processes
Manufacturing / Medical
Coralville, USA
Business Functions
Engineering, Quality Assurance and Manufacturing
Problems in Automated DNA Drying Processes
The client is a manufacturer of customized DNA Oligos. They use Autonomous DNA Dreyer machines to prepare oligo samples by drying them down to a required level for use in further synthesis and analysis. Dreyer has a connected PLC which is responsible for managing the cycles and providing instructions to Dreyer.
The client needed to integrate their existing software suite (where cycles are maintained), to automate the drying process. The main challenges with their system included the following:
-
Incorrect cycles pre-loaded to Dreyer
-
Placing the incorrect rack in the Dreyer
-
Absence of look up and load of cycles to Dreyer based on the barcode scan on the rack
-
With no real time integration of software suite with Dreyer, process flows were disconnected and error prone
Solution
S-Team worked to provide recommendations about process improvements with the following solutions:
Solution Architecture
Results
-
Simple and easy barcode scan-based management
-
Minimized errors on loading the cycles and rack placement
-
Allocation/deallocation overhead taken away from manual process
Technology Stack Used in this project
Application was built on this framework
PLC is programmed following this language
RS 232 based communication interface
