THE ROLE OF THE AUTOMATION DEVELOPMENT GROUP IN ANALYTICAL RESEARCH-AND-DEVELOPMENT AT DUPONT-MERCK

Laboratory robotics has been firmly established in many non-QC laborat ories as a valuable tool for automating pharmaceutical dosage from ana lysis. Often a single project or product line is used to justify an in itial robot purchase thus introducing robotics to the laboratory for t he first time. However, to gain widespread acceptance within the labor atory and to justify further investment in robotics, existing robots m ust be used to develop analyses for existing manual methods as well as new projects beyond the scope off the original purchase justification . The Automation Development Group in Analytical Research and Developm ent is a team of analysts primarily devoted to developing new methods and adapting existing methods for the robot. This team approach develo ped the expertise and synergy necessary to significantly expand the co ntribution of robotics to automation in the authors' laboratory.