BMCE

The Successful Development of a Custom Preparations Database.

(A lesson for Government maybe? End of Politics)

When I joined The Radiochemical Centre in 1977 there were no computers in the Organic Department, Building 22.

The company Order Processing Operation had been computerised in 1969 but the 14C Custom Preparations Group

was run using Quotations Forms filed in chemical formula order, orders logged on cardboard strips held on a metal

sheet, the next code number logged in the CFQ book, preparation details written up and analyses sellotaped into lab

notebooks, product specification sheets typed in the department office and communication with the regions usually

done by Telex.

The Group was not always busy and sometimes there was free time between finishing one prep and being allocated

another. I spent this time making a numerical list for myself of the 14C catalogue items including the deleted items.

This interest in the deleted items which then became Custom Preparations if ordered may have been noted and may

have led to me being put in charge of the Custom Preparations surplus system when we transferred down to Cardiff

in 1980 as the previous owner was not transferring.

The surplus system was run using a card index with cards stored in alphabetical order with any remaining unsold

stocks of deleted catalogue items stored in numerical order.

Early in the 1980’s John Sutton, who had become the Custom Preparations manager, bought two HP150 computers

to run the business using a DELTA database system where the databases were able to be set up by the users.

Quotations continued to be raised using the old forms but when orders were received the details were logged onto

one of the HP150’s onto a database called PREPINFO and any surplus material remaining from preparations logged

onto the other HP150 onto a database called SURPLUS. As the owner of the surplus system I was involved in setting

up that database and of entering any fresh data. This was my first involvement with computers. The database held

all the relevant data about each compound such as specific activity, radiochemical purity and stock levels and it was

also able to record transactions when sales were made and to adjust stock levels automatically. I then was able to

set up various reporting systems to use this information. At that time surpluses accounted for 10% of the business

and there was always an excitement to see what sales had been achieved that month to see whether Custom

Preparations targets had been reached. Surplus information was also held on an HP150 in Amersham Labs for staff

to interrogate in order to answer queries and I was able to transfer a weekly file up to Amersham via the mainframe

computers but with no email the file name had to be sent by phone! The Surplus database ran for many years with

little trouble except that the transactions every so often used to duplicate and so to prevent this they were regularly

archived off into a separate SURPTRAN database. Both databases eventually succumbed to the Millennium Bug!

Early in 1986 I was called into the office and it was suggested to me that because of my experience with the

SURPLUS database I should leave doing bench chemistry for a while and to be the Custom Preparations

representative in setting up a new computer system to run the business from enquiry stage and the raising of

quotations through to the completion of the preparations and the actual costing and variance of the preparations.

The Group was now part of the Biomedical Division and Paul Collins had left the Cardiff QC group to be the Divisions

computer lead. He had agreed the project and the programming would be done in Cardiff within Alastair Wilson’s

group based in the Mezzanine halfway down the spine corridor and I would liaise with this group. I agreed and, as

explained later, I never returned to bench chemistry. Since the Group was part of the Biomedical Division the

database was called Biomedical Cost Estimates and so BMCE was created.

Much of the initial work was done by Paul who discussed the current data flow with the quotation managers, with

the regional staff and with Order Processing staff so that by early August he had written a system requirements

specification which had been agreed by all those involved so that the project could be passed on to Alistair’s group

to begin programming. I am afraid that I must admit that I have forgotten the name of the gentleman who started

the programming. I shall call him ‘Adam’ but if anyone remembers his name then please add a postscript to this

article so that he can be acknowledged.

During this time Paul invited myself and James Johnston to accompany him to a demonstration in London given to

the Chemical Industry by Molecular Design Limited (MDL) of a new bespoke database (Chembase) where chemical

structures could be drawn, stored and searched both by complete match and also by partial structure. For instance,

all compounds stored in the database containing a benzene ring, no matter what other groups were attached, would

be found if a benzene ring were searched for. They also demonstrated Chemtext which was a system where one

could produce a document which included chemical structures. Custom Preparations bought a copy of each of these

systems and, with the help of a summer student, put all their previous preparation final product and intermediate

product structures onto a Chembase database along with the molecular formula, code number and notebook

reference and then continued to keep it up to date. Chemtext was used sometimes to produce product specification

sheets but when Custom Preparations introduced the Value-Added Package (VAP) for sending to the customer

Chemtext was ideal for producing an impressive diagram of the synthetic route. Besides these purchases the

meeting with MDL had later consequences for BMCE.

Custom Preparations had never been included in the normal company systems up until now. Final products sent up

from Cardiff to Amersham were included on the stock transfer note attached to the chest but when they arrived in

Amersham they were not recorded in the Finished Stock System (FSS) but were simply placed in a tray in the

appropriate cold room awaiting the order paperwork to be processed. This paperwork was produced as the result of

a phone call from Cardiff to Order Processing. The product was then picked and shipped but no transaction recorded

on FSS. I discussed the situation with Product Finishing staff at Amersham and we agreed that from now on I would

record the products on FSS as batch 0 although no batch number would appear on the label. In this way a better trail

of the product could be achieved.

‘Adam’ was making good progress in creating screens and programming from the system requirements specification.

The first two screens for the creation of the cost estimate (CEHEADER) contained all the details of the specification

of the product such as name, specific activity range required, physical form and packaging as well as details of the

customer, country and region making the request. The cost estimate number was then generated automatically by

combining the cost centre of the group (C8 for Carbon, C2 for Tritium), the year as a two digit number and then the

next four digit number in sequence so that the first cost estimate raised in the system was C8870001. A choice was

made now whether the cost calculation would be automatic or manual. The third screen (CEDETAIL) was where the

cost calculations were done. For an automatic calculation the pack size required was entered in the first fields

(number of packs, quantity and unit of measure) and then the starting material followed by the quantity required

and then the labour grade and time required to complete the preparation. The system could then find the costs for

that starting material and labour grade and do the initial calculation of the overall cost of the preparation. It would

also use the data recorded against each starting material part to calculate the cost from its precursor and from that

precursor onwards all the way back to barium carbonate from which all carbon products derive. Each cost level

would be displayed on the screen and the quotation manager could choose which ever level, usually the lowest cost,

to use. This screen could display up to seven levels of calculation and up to five different pack sizes could be

calculated. A manual calculation, if chosen, would involve the quotation manager entering his own value for the cost

of starting material and would be used when material other than standard catalogue material was used as starting

material, for example a surplus from another prep. The last screen displayed all the pack sizes calculated and had a

field to allow comments to be made such as what materials and methods the custom had to supply. The cost

estimate could then be printed and sent to the appropriate region.

‘Adam’ and I discussed the work done so far but nothing much needed to be changed.

TRANSACT programming was used for the project and it was suggested that I should do some of the future

programming. I was given the training manual and access to the system. After going through the training I was asked

to write the programs for the maintenance of the parts data and of the labour rate data which involved being able to

add new data for parts and labour, amend the data and delete data and to be able to automatically update the data

all at once with next year’s costs. Three years data was held. Last year’s costs allowed preparations to be varianced

correctly when the work was mostly carried out in the previous financial year and next year’s costs allowed

quotations to be raised before the end of the financial year when the work would be carried out in the new financial

year.

The quotation system went live in October 1987 although there was still work to be done to be able to accept any

orders placed, to variance the preparations once the work was completed and to provide reporting systems. It was

decided that when the system went live that the old and new systems would be used together for a while, but the

new system was so acceptable that the old system was stopped after only a few days.

The quotations were initially printed out on the printer in the computer suite in the RP2 foyer and could be collected

by the quotation manager on his way from tea. This caused aggravation sometimes when the printouts were not

there for no apparent reason. To overcome this a printer was installed in the quotation office and the printouts

directed there. It was also initially intended that quotations over a certain value were to get finance approval, but

this was quickly dropped because it added no value as the system held and used the correct standard costs.

A few weeks later the first bombshell dropped when ‘Adam’ decided to leave the company and to return to his

previous employment in the steel industry.

Much of the work had already been done for the order acceptance and variance programs so it was an easy task to

finish these. The order acceptance program was to accept the pack size ordered, to create the next code number

and to store it in the data acceptance dataset. An order confirmation printout showing all the details was sent to the

regions with a copy to order processing printed out in Amersham and an order acceptance printed out for the lab

staff. The date was always entered on the screens as DDMMYY but stored in the database as YYMMDD which made

searching for data ranges work but on print outs the two digit MM was always converted to a three character month

to avoid confusion in the regions. The variance program was like the quotation program and involved the chemist

entering the quantity of starting material used and the time taken in order to calculate the actual costs and to store

these and the variances in the variance dataset.

No work had been done on the reports and I created these. These were monthly output reports for the whole group,

for each section and for each team as well as a work-in-hand report. My end of year performance assessment

included the well-used cliché of me now being a round peg in a round hole.

The system was initially used for carbon-14 but was soon extended to tritium. The only difference for tritium was

that a manual calculation was always used as the materials cost was always entered manually so that an appropriate

differential could be achieved between pack sizes as tritium materials were relatively cheap.

The second bombshell dropped in March when Paul Collins announced that he was leaving Amersham to take up a

marketing position with Molecular Design Limited. He came down to Cardiff to hand over all his paperwork involving

the project on Thursday 21st April 1988. I remember the date well because it was early that morning that my

youngest daughter chose to start to arrive in the world. I was there for the morning home birth, but I was able to

arrange for a former neighbour to come over while I spent an of hour on site in the afternoon. Thus, after two weeks

paternity leave, I returned to work as the only person in the company who knew anything about the internal

workings of BMCE and the person who in future would do all the program maintenance and changes. No more

chemistry!

In the early 1990’s the quotations group moved from the office off 1.37 to the former mass spectrometry room

which had the definite advantage of having air conditioning for those hot summer days.

The Author Norman Basketter Peter Cartwright David Short

Jack of all Trades Tritium Quotations Manager Surplus Coordinator Carbon-14 Quotations Manager

The first major change to the systems was when tritium quotations were done using a modular system to calculate

the labour element of the quotation. Modules included the tritium labelling method, the purification method, QC

and despatch. Which method was used and how many of each was entered on the quotation and the system would

then calculate the total labour hours required. To decide how many hours to allocate to each module Alan

Simmonds, the tritium section leader, compared the actual modules used to the labour quoted for a lot of the recent

orders completed and came up with the best fit for the number of hours for each module. New screens were

required and a new program written by modification of the existing quotation program.

The system also began to be used to raise quotations for catalogue specials using a manual quotation and later to

raise quotations for Iodine Custom Preparations. The iodine quotations were raised in Cardiff using the same

modular system as tritium but the lab work continued to be done in Amersham for orders received.

ISO9000 certification meant that all these procedures had to be documented and extra printouts of order

acceptance data produced to demonstrate quality requirements had been met.

The 1997 merger with Pharmacia Biotech meant products now had to be registered in SSAS and DAS. This required

the generation of an eight-digit number. 2510 was allocated to carbon-14 products and 2512 allocated to tritium

products as the first four digits and the remaining digits were allocated sequentially by BMCE. A printout of the data

required for these two systems was produced and printed remotely in Amersham because the data initially was to

be entered by staff there. The fact that late changes were often required meant that this method of entry caused

delays, so I was given access to the systems and entered the data myself.

The schematic shown below shows the position of BMCE in the flow of data for Custom Preparation products with

the initial data entered in the various systems by me in Cardiff.

The Millennium Bug meant changes needed to be made to the programs. An external programmer was hired on this

occasion to do the work. This was done by increasing the date fields from six to eight characters and adding a

century to each date record so the date now became DDMMCCYY and held on the database as CCYYMMDD. I then

spent a day in Amersham with the programmer to check that the programs all worked correctly

A change was also made to the method of costing for carbon-14 when the labs decided to use preparation steps as a

way of measuring the sections output efficiency. Instead of entering the amount of starting material required and

the total labour time required, the quotation manager would enter the time and yield of each step in the

preparation up to a total of seven steps. No more than seven steps were usually required but more could be

accommodated by combining them up into the first step. The system would them calculate the total yield and hence

the amount of starting material required and add up the total labour. This method of working again required a

change to the screens and the program.

The system over its lifetime worked well but, in some ways, did not keep up with computer developments. Data

output from the system could only be sent to the screen or to a printer. Prints were then faxed to the required

recipient but often further explanation was required than could be entered into the limited comments fields. With

the development of electronic mail it would have been useful if the output could have been saved to a file and

attached to an e-mail which included those further comments.

I worked on two other computer system introductions towards the end of my time at Cardiff.

I was the Custom Preparations representative during the introduction of the JDEdwards (JDE) manufacturing system

to replace the Materials Management Life Sciences Cardiff (MMLSC) system. Although Custom Preparations had had

little interaction with MMLSC they would be fully integrated within JDE although quotations would remain outside.

The Custom Preparations team leaders were kept fully informed of the decisions made with regular meetings and

those involved once the system went live were trained so that when the system did go live there were few problems

and any that did occur could be quickly solved.

The second system was the replacement of the Central Despatch System (CDS) with SAP. The labs had no

involvement with this system and Fred Jackson and I represented Cardiff to make sure all the systems worked for

Cardiff. The implementation caused no problems for Custom Preparations and as a result, to my surprise, my section

leader gave me a ‘Big Thank You’ award.

These new systems often did not talk to each other so much of the data had to be entered manually. The data to be

entered was all available on the printouts produced by BMCE and so, with practice, all the systems could be updated

with half an hour’s typing. Considering the monetary value of these products it was a small price to pay. When

guests were shown round the laboratory they were often shown a few grams of product and told they were worth

tens of thousands of pounds.

Just before I left the company work I did get involved in the beginning of the creation a custom preparations

quotation module within JDE but as a few months after I left GE announced that they were closing down Cardiff

Radiochemicals I suspect that this project probably did not get very far. The Custom Preparations Group did get sold

to Quotient Biosciences based in Northampton and moved to purpose built facilities in Cardiff Bay. They have

subsequently become part of the Chinese company Pharmaron.

The lesson to be learnt (see title) is perhaps if you are introducing a new computer system then its development

team should include people who used the original system that it is replacing and people who will use the new

system so that comprehensive specifications can be given to the programmers actually creating the system.

With the introduction of SAP at Amersham the only system running on the Amersham AH1 mainframe was BMCE

which made it uneconomical. Therefore the data held within the system was transferred to Excel spreadsheets and

in the summer of 2017 after nearly twenty years of faultless service BMCE was turned off.

Gordon Stephenson (1977-2007)