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Introduction:
As a next step, automated data collection and storage solutions emerged that
digitally stored the data directly at the time of measurement. Unfortunately,
most vendors offering such a solution tacked on proprietary software solutions
that required multiple steps to actually enter the data in their customers’
databases. In a typical “How Not to Do It” scenario, the vendor provides a
proprietary software that requires connection to the digital thermometer. When
connected to the local QA computer, the temperature data uploads only to the
vendor’s proprietary software. To integrate the data into the company’s
database, the QA technician must then download a comma-separated (.csv)
data file and upload it to the company’s database. This is a cumbersome task
that may or may not occur promptly and may also be subject to errors. This
approach does not allow direct two-way communication with the thermometer
to change or update settings and defaults.
“Why does this matter?” you might ask. The three-fold answer is auditability,
traceability and cost. All of the previously described temperature measurement
processes have multiple inherent disadvantages for each of these
characteristics. In a commercial temperature measurement environment,
auditability and traceability translate to “no human interaction between
thermometer and server”. 5-star traceability also means that the data exhibits
a clear chain of custody, which is not possible if there’s human intervention
between measurement and the server. Of course, the data is meaningless
unless the thermometer is accurate. In that vein, any integrated solution needs
to document that the instrument has been regularly tested for accuracy.
Business managers need to see clear justification for implementing the project.
1Joel E. Ross, “What is 1-10-100 Rule?”, on the Total Quality Management blog,
February 25, 2009. See:
https://totalqualitymanagement.wordpress.com/2009/02/25/what-is-1-10-100-rule/
thermometer-to-server data with no human intervention. The data’s chain-of-
custody is completely transparent and documented. As a result, the system
can deliver immediate out-of-range alerts to prevent potentially contaminated
from shipping to customers. A vendor supplied, well documented Software
Development Kit to support the automated temperature collection enables
faster process development for IT. The resulting integrated solution improves
quality processes and produces a high ROI while minimizing implementation
costs versus hard coding from scratch.
The short answer is, YES. TEGAM, the industry leader in integrated
enterprise-scale temperature measurement automation, produces two
different lines of temperature collection solutions. The TEGAM SDK
supports the TEGAM 920 and 930 series thermometers to deliver direct
temperature measurement-to-server performance and near real-time
alerts.