trends in analytical chemistry, vol. 72, no. 1, 1993 xv

an excellent job of explaining ICP-MS in a most readable manner. Informa- tion can easily be found using the in- dex, although an additional one, by element, would have been quite handy. This book should be truly in- valuable to potential users and new- comers to the technique, even if it has a strong geological “flavour” (four out

of six authors are in geology). It can also be of value as a reference source to experts in the field.

D. BEAUCHEMIN

Dx D. Beauchemin is at the Department

of Chemistry, Queen’s University, King- ston, Ont., Canada K7L 3N6.

The customer oriented laboratory

The Customer Oriented Laboratory, by K Umikel; Raven Press, New York,1991, US$61.50 (200pages)

“The Customer Oriented Laboratory” is a milestone in the development of quality management in the testing in- dustries. The book explores the phi- losophy and practices of the Customer Care approach to management of clinical laboratory work in a North American environment. Whilst there are some aspects of style and presen- tation which may jar on the European reader and some issues of practice and law which will vary from sector to sector and country to country, the un- derlying approach and advice is appli- cable to all areas of measurement.

At the basic level quality involves producing a product which is fit for its purpose. In more advanced circles it strives to achieve excellence of serv- ice by harnessing the energy of all the staff of an organisation to work as a team to provide the customer and the broader community with the service they want at the best price.

The chapter headings listed below give the flavour of the contents: Who Are our Customers and What Do They Want?; Planning Your New Program; In-Service Educational Programs; Use of Employee Participating Groups; Quality Circles; Problem Solving; Position Descriptions and Performance Standards; Selecting Customer-Oriented Personnel; In- doctrination of Employees; Perform- ance Reviews and Rewards; Oral Communication for Service Provid- ers; Use and Abuse of the Telephone;

Written Communications; Introduc- ing Change; Complaints and Com- plainers; Retention of Personnel; Im- proving Productivity; Budgeting and Cost Containment; Marketing; Qual- ity Assurance; Leaders in the Client- Oriented Laboratory.

The book contains a wealth of sim- ple common sense advice plus de- tailed plans and strategies for analys- ing requirements and establishing new systems. My main criticism is that the evangelical style encourages instant conversion which may just as rapidly evaporate when you put the book down. Also it makes it sound too easy. Take Chapter 5, Quality Circles; in 7 pages we are instructed in all the key

issues and advised on the roles of group members, agendas for meetings and even on pitfalls to look out for. In addition there are 13 references to more detailed works on quality cir- cles; all very useful stuff but the un- initiated who follow the recipe are likely to bake a less than cordon bleu cake. On the other hand it is a good starting point.

A word of caution to those looking for guidance on technical matters or on how to establish a quality system complying with IS0 Guide 25 or IS0 9000; it is not that type of book and it is none the worse for that.

Tom Peters was one of the first ex- ponents of customer service as the bedrock of business strategy. William Umiker tells us how to do it in the laboratory. Those who actually apply even a fraction of the advice offered are more likely to survive the choppy waters of competition and I commend the book to those who have a liking for survival.

BERNARD KING

DI: Bernard King is Deputy Direc- tor/Government Analyst at the Labora-

tory of the Government Chemist, Ted- dington, Middlesex, UK.

Computation in biological NMR

Computational Aspects of the Study of

Biological Macromolecules by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, ed-

ited by Jeffrey C. Hoch, Flemming M.

Paulsen, and Christina Redfield, (NATO ASI Series A: Volume 225), Plenum Press, New York and London. 1991. US$

115.00 (x + 464 pages), ISBN: 0-306- 44114-4

The 37 papers in this book were pre- sented at a NATO Workshop held in 1990. The contributions collected here, unified to some extent by the central theme of computation, touch on a number of different areas of bio- logical NMR, and together provide a

useful view of contemporary research in this large, acronym-laden field. Topics common to many of the reports include descriptions of hardware and software, signal processing, structure determination, and spectral simplifi- cation and analysis, there being also some more general explanations of multidimensional NMR and alterna- tives to Fourier transformation found in a few specifically dedicated chap- ters. As might be expected in a volume of this sort, a number of the papers are concerned principally with the devel- opment of either mathematical or ex- perimental techniques, while others report mainly the results of experi-