The E. coli pilot plant at Genentech runs hundreds of 10L fermenters to help develop part of the company's pipeline. The Pilot Plant is a non GMP facility and processes 20,000+ E coli samples a year.  Sampling is done every 2 hours, 24/7 and each sample takes approx. 20min to process. The processing of the samples is a repetitive task that causes ergonomic problems and has inherent variability among technicians, shifts and work stations. The E coli sample processing was seen as a potential area of improvement though automation and robotics.  DASH, a custom robot, was designed and built to automate the sample handling process. This work presents the lessons learned and challenges in conceptualizing, designing, building and implementing DASH in the Pilot Plant.

DASH: A pilot plant E. coli sample handling robot

245th National Meeting (2013)

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