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I apologize if this has been addressed previously, but I did not find a relevant thread in the archive.

I am curious as to how core Directors calculate their capacity within each service. One potential metric is instrument throughput which is relatively easy to calculate. However, real world throughput on an instrument is influenced by many factors including collection of samples received over time, coordination of personnel across multiple activities (bench/data analysis/communication with researchers), protocol time, competition from different assays performed on same instrument, etc. 

Services with relatively few and tightly defined steps are easier to estimate, but services that offer many options such as library prep and sequencing are more challenging due to the number of different protocols used and the different periods of time associated with each protocol to get from sample to data.

I look forward to your thoughts.

Best, Geoff

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Geoffrey Neale
Director, Hartwell Center for Bioinformatics & Biotechnology
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
geoffrey.neale@stjude.org
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Hi Geoff, 

This is a question we've thought about a recently and I'm interested to hear from others too.  For the reasons you outlined, plus variability in demand and unplanned outages, we think it's important to look at the the previous 6-12 months utilisation of an instrument or service, in addition to other measures, to get a realistic estimation of capacity.

Sarah

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Sarah McAtamney
Griffith University
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Original Message:
Sent: 04-18-2025 11:13
From: Geoffrey Neale
Subject: Core capacity

I apologize if this has been addressed previously, but I did not find a relevant thread in the archive.

I am curious as to how core Directors calculate their capacity within each service. One potential metric is instrument throughput which is relatively easy to calculate. However, real world throughput on an instrument is influenced by many factors including collection of samples received over time, coordination of personnel across multiple activities (bench/data analysis/communication with researchers), protocol time, competition from different assays performed on same instrument, etc. 

Services with relatively few and tightly defined steps are easier to estimate, but services that offer many options such as library prep and sequencing are more challenging due to the number of different protocols used and the different periods of time associated with each protocol to get from sample to data.

I look forward to your thoughts.

Best, Geoff

------------------------------
Geoffrey Neale
Director, Hartwell Center for Bioinformatics & Biotechnology
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
geoffrey.neale@stjude.org
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