A laboratory information management system (LIMS) for an academic microchip fabrication facility

A relational database laboratory information management system for managing the personnel, facilities, equipment, and instruments associated with a university microelectronics facility is described. Emphasis has been placed on assuring personnel safety. The system includes capabilities for managing training and access to facilities, instruments and tools, for monitoring task assignments to personnel, for tracking inventories of supplies and capital property, and for handling maintenance of both facilities and equipment. There is a built-in mail system that allows communications with personnel based on a wide range of sorting choices including user classification and facility and instrument access rights. As is unique to university facilities, the system is also capable of tracking courses that may be taught in different laboratories. The LIMS gathers data from an unlimited number of computers in an unlimited number of widely separated facilities over a distributed computer network using TCP/IP communications over the University LAN and a Microsoft SQL 2000 Server. We have used coding technologies that allow LIMS administrators to add and delete an unlimited number of users, facilities, instruments, inventory items, and courses. The system is thus expansible and capable of handling the smallest to the largest facilities without any recoding. User access is via several custom programs coded in VB and via protected WWW access on pages generated in HTML and with active server pages (ASP) from a Microsoft IIS server. Both the VB programs and the ASP pages are developed in a highly modular form with security controls that allow the laboratory administrators to control access to each module at three levels-none, read only, and read/write. The code makes use of a large number (currently over 100) SQL 2000 stored procedures. These procedures make it easy to perform complex SQL operations. Data integrity is maintained using a strategy of using multiple servers to separate various server functions (FTP, HTTP, and SQL) and by using multiple levels of backup. The SQL 2000 database is backed up dynamically and daily to a separate PC, and the other servers (FTP and HTTP) are backed up daily over the University LAN using Tivoli.