| Author | Message | ||
     hlmark |
Tony - I don't know what the situation is in the UK or in Europe, but I just found out that in the US there is an FDA regulation governing consultants in the Code of Federal Regulations (in 21 CFR 211.34) that requires Pharma organizations to assure consultant qualifications. That's to keep anyone with little or no experience from just hanging up a shingle and claiming to be a "consultant". | ||
| Tony Davies (Td) |
Dear Kathryn, I think we will make you the unofficial publicist for NIR consultants! Of course I could not agree more! I think the problem is partial one of education. The bosses do not know how difficult it is. Novice NIR analysts may not know and would tell the boss if they did! In my experience bosses seem much more worried about "wasting" money on consultants than reducing their exposure to catastrophic failure. I was once asked if I would analyse the results of an instrument trial. I said yes, I had better come over and discuss the experimental design. The reaction was "is that necessary" and "I will have to ask the boss"; the boss said "No" and I said "I don't think I can help you". Perhaps we should consider offering to test and grade new recruits? Best wishes, Tony | ||
| Kathryn Lee |
I would like to add a comment about a topic that arose during discussions at the recent Eastern Analytical Symposium that is related to training. Even the best training course and the best students leave opportunities for problems to arise. (Let's be honest here, are you really an A+ student?) First you get general training for general applications before you even try something. Your specific application may not be covered, and a new application may arise years after the training. Plus, there is a lot to learn, and everything may not be well understood the first time. Applying NIR for successful analysis is very often difficult to do well, and is somewhat easier to do poorly. It is often difficult to know when you are doing poorly; sometimes we are lucky enough to realize you need help, and sometimes not. Thus, I would highly recommend that anybody new to NIR, even if they are confident about the quality of their work, to hire a consultant to look over their work, and to make suggestions how to do things better or even how to do additional things. There are so many stories about problems that have gone on for a year or more that can be solved in a few minutes by an experienced person. Some of these problems begin with the presentation of the sample to the instrument! It is not worthwhile collecting a lot of bad data for a long time, and then spending a long time to interpret it. When you weigh the cost of wasting a year (or poor quality product, or ineffective analysis) against a day of consultant time, the cost of the consultant seems cheap. I am not a consultant, but have seen a lot of problems in NIR applications at even the best of companies. Do yourself a favor, hire a consultant! | ||
| hlmark |
I don't know of any courses offered in the UK, but I will teaching a three-day NIR course with Emil Ciurczak early next year in Amsterdam under the auspices of the Center for Professional Advancement ( http://www.cfpa.com ) that you might want to consider attending. Howard \o/ /_\ | ||
| Pioneer Commodity Analysis (Pca) |
What are the courses offered in the UK? Thanks | ||
| amy-zhao |
Hello to all I want to know where there is short-time trainning classes for NIR qualitative analysis technology.I have done some analysis using NIR technology. But I'm lack of practice experience. I want to know if I set up a training set for a new attribute how to validate it at every analysis time? And how to decide that a training set(calibration set) is a good training set? How to value the NIR results? This kind questions about practise using disturb me. My sample is mainly agricultural products. And I'm live in China. If the tuition is not very expensive, I want to learn, for we have many many samples need to analyse every year. Your help would be deeply appreciated! Thank you! Amy-zhao | ||
| Tony Davies (Td) |
Dear Amy-zhao, Welcome to the NIR community! Unfortunately you have just missed some training courses which were given before the start of our conference in Korea. NIR Publications runs training courses but these are in the UK, a long way for you to come. If you understand Japanese then I expect that there will be japanese training courses before their national conference. I will ask Dr Sumio Kawano to contact you. Best wishes, Tony Davies | ||
| David Russell (Russell) |
Foss NIRSystems claims to offer training in Bangkok, Thailand. Look them up at www.foss-nirsystems.com for more information. | ||
| David Russell (Russell) |
Foss NIRSystems claims to offer training in Bangkok, Thailand. Look them up at www.foss-nirsystems.com for more information. |