E-News for June 2000
Greetings ALMA Members,
This month’s safety issue deals with solvent extractions. Refluxing extractions are so common and have been performed safely so many times in most labs that analysts tend to become complacent about the potential for accidents when bringing highly flammable liquids in contact with a heat source. This is a good area to perform a safety audit to make sure that the equipment is in good shape and that appropriate precautions are taken. Examine the glassware to make sure that there are no scratches that can cause it to break on heating. Also, consider the consequences if the flask does break during the procedure—some labs continue to use heating mantles where the hot solvent would come in contact with the hot filament. After this happened in my lab a few years ago, we replaced all of our heating mantles with the type where the heating elements are isolated and most of the solvent is contained if the flask breaks. Although extractions are usually performed in a well-ventilated hood, you should still consider the potential for igniting vapors. For example, make sure that Powerstats, outlet strips, or other potential sources for an electrical arc are located outside the hood or well away from the extraction area. And, as always, make sure that the analyst uses the appropriate personal protective equipment when performing the procedure.
Also related to solvents, you might check the electrical grounding of your waste disposal containers. These containers are commonly grounded to prevent electrostatic discharge from igniting vapors during solvent transfer. A recent check in my lab found some of the containers with ground wires attached to painted surfaces which did not provide the required conductivity. To be sure that these containers are properly grounded, check continuity with a multi-meter.
Those of us who endure the politics and gamesmanship of preparing and managing budgets will be delighted to learn that the management wizards are now thinking that this might not be the best use of our time. A group known as the Beyond Budgeting Round Table is advocating the use of key current measures to track financial performance as an alternative to tracking variances against budgets. The budgeting process is said to be time consuming, based upon arbitrary rules rather than on realistic needs, of little operational value, inflexible to competitive changes in the marketplace, and a re-hash of events of the past. For example, budget variances dont tell you anything about the financial performance of your lab relative to the competition and usually are not a factor in decisions on the purchase of supplies or repair of equipment necessary to maintain operations. A process that uses key measures to consider the benefit derived from expenditures and guides the manager in making financial decisions is an attractive alternative. This is not an entirely new idea since Svenska Handelsbanken, a Swedish bank with the lowest cost structure of any bank in Europe, abandoned budgets several decades ago. Volvo also replaced budgets with key metrics to monitor performance and says this change contributed to the companys turnaround. Of course, a good computer system to provide real-time performance data is needed to make this type of system feasible. For more on this topic, start your search at www.cam-i.org/bb.html.
If you have any comments, cost saving suggestions, opinions, etc. let me hear from you .
Wayne