[labnetwork] Question about tool charges

[Aebersold,Julia W.]

Sandrine, we only charge for tool usage.

Cheers!

Julia Aebersold, Ph.D. 
MNTC Cleanroom Manager
Shumaker Research Building, Room 233
2210 South Brook Street
University of Louisville
Louisville, KY  40292

502-852-1572
http://louisville.edu/micronano/

-----Original Message-----
From: labnetwork-bounces at mtl.mit.edu [mailto:labnetwork-bounces at mtl.mit.edu] On Behalf Of John Shott
Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2014 10:20 AM
To: Sandrine Martin
Cc: labnetwork at mtl.mit.edu
Subject: Re: [labnetwork] Question about tool charges

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


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