[labnetwork] Question about tool charges

[John Shott]

Sandrine:

To add to comments by others: At Stanford, we charge for tool time.  We 
ask that our lab members send out email to the tool-specific mailing 
list when they cancel a reservation on a high-demand tool.  If we 
receive complaints that there is too much reserved-but-not-used time on 
a tool, we take it up individually with the offending parties.  While 
there is always the temptation to charge folks for unused reservations, 
I've found that to be something that is easy to say and hard to 
implement.  Even automatically identifying a reservation that did not 
result in matching equipment use is not trivial.  Plus, what do you do 
if someone failed to use a reservation because their progress was 
stopped by problems with an upstream tool?

Like Berkeley, we have tool-specific reservation limits that can be 
fine-tuned for our high-demand tools.  We have also learned that it's 
important to have software that allows you to track the details of when 
reservations were made and deleted.  That is often useful to find folks 
who are trying to "game" the reservation system in some way.  For 
example, people that have reached their reservation limit on a tool will 
often get someone else to reserve a tool.  Then that second person 
cancels the reservation at the last minute (thinking that they have 
covered their tracks ...) and then the first person magically walks up 
to the tool and begins to use it.

Good luck,

John


On 3/11/2014 10:57 AM, Sandrine Martin wrote:
> Hello,
>
> As we continue our analysis of costs and charges at the University of 
> Michigan LNF, we would like to know a couple of things at other 
> facilities that also charge for tool time:
> - do you charge for reserved time or time actually used?
> - what is your policy for tool reservations that are not used?
>
> Thanks
> Sandrine