INTEGRATION OF INSTRUMENTS AND A LABORATORY INFORMATION MANAGEMENT-SYSTEM AT THE INFORMATION LEVEL - AN INDUCTIVELY-COUPLED PLASMA SPECTROMETER

A software upgrade to an analytical instrument computer and a laborato ry information management system (LIMS) is described. The instrument i s a modified Jarrell-Ash model 750 inductively coupled plasma (ICP) sp ectrometer that is connected through a custom designed interface to a DEC PDP-11/23 computer. The LIMS is a customized system based on the M UMPS operating system running on a DEC PDP-11/24 computer. Both comput ers are located in the Chemical Analysis Branch of the Materials Divis ion of NASA Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, OH. The improved softw are in both computers allows them to share information about sample ba tches submitted to the laboratory for analysis and the analytical resu lts obtained for those batches. This has decreased the amount of manua l transcription required of the analyst, reducing errors and freeing u p time for more analyses to be performed. The local storage of batch i nformation on the ICP computer also lessens the impact of LIMS down ti me.