By Kevin Moore

With years of experience in lab automation, Wolfgang Jörg at Boehringer Ingelheim needed to find a new automation solution for a colleague working with compound management. Presenting at SLAS 2016, Wolfgang said, “We decided to test Fluent® 780. Tecan loaned us the system for free to test for six months providing we agreed to purchase if the system met our expectations.” With its high throughput, flexibility and accuracy, the system exceeded their expectations and has become a critical component in their high throughput compound management solution.

high throughput compound management solution - Wofgang Jorg

Wolfgang Jörg is the head of the Electronics/Lab Automation at Boehringer Ingelheim. The pharmaceutical company has been working with Tecan ever since it purchased a Tecan RSP 5000 in 1996. Boehringer Ingelheim has completed over 80 automation projects using Tecan for pipetting, along with a competitor.

Since 2011, the company has been ramping up its investment in automation systems. In 2015, a colleague asked Wolfgang if he could recommend an automation system to be used in a project called Compounds in Plate Dissolution Station (CIPDIS). Wolfgang decided to test the Fluent® 780. Following a three-day training course, he and his team started to build a test system in FluentControl™ that would perform two benchmark processes for dissolution and sorting. This involved smooth integration of Fluent with 3rd party devices, including a shaker, sealer, barcode printer, and de-capper, with LabVIEW directing the control of every device. 

Six months down the line, Boehringer Ingelheim chose to buy Fluent. Fluent exceeded the team’s expectations and they are now concentrating on the other components in the system, aiming to complete a Factory Acceptance Test in Q2/2016 and then move the system online. Wolfgang ended his talk with a quote by Henry Ford that expresses his appreciation of working with Tecan, “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success”.

Wolfgang’s presentation, one of the most popular at the Tecan booth over the two days of SLAS 2016, describes in detail how the CIPDIS project went, and how the Fluent 780 performed. Watch Wolfgang’s presentation now. 

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