University of Pennsylvania Uses Mendix to Build Custom App for Research Lab in a Week

App Streamlines Scheduling, Billing and Analytical Processes for Quattrone Nanofabrication Lab; UPenn to Present the Solution at the 2014 UGIM Symposium

BOSTON June 17, 2014Mendix, the enterprise app platform as a service company, today announced that the University of Pennsylvania’s Quattrone Nanofabrication Lab has adopted the Mendix App Platform to rapidly deliver a versatile new application that has streamlined the lab’s scheduling, billing and analytical processes. The lab’s engineers built the app themselves in less than a week — delivering the precise capabilities they needed, including a unique way to measure the operational health of each valuable piece of equipment.

The University’s Nanofabrication Lab turned to Mendix to improve a series of archaic, manual processes that sapped productivity, delayed monthly invoicing and hindered their ability to analyze equipment usage and performance. The lab’s leaders needed to get a new app up and running before they moved into a new building, and had a limited budget for the project. Leaders ruled out adding an off-the-shelf management solution due to the excessive cost and didn’t want to offload the task to the university IT department because traditional code-based development processes would take too long to complete.

“It was essential that we delivered this app quickly and cost-effectively to get our outdated systems up to speed,” said Noah Clay, director, Nanofabrication, at the University of Pennsylvania. “Traditional development and integration times would have been anywhere from six to 12 months. With Mendix, we were able to get our application up and running in just a few weeks.”

Lab engineers, with no coding background, used the Mendix App Platform’s intuitive and flexible functionality to quickly build billing, equipment reservation and analytics functions they had been dreaming about for years. The omnibus app is expected to save staffers several days of work each month on invoices alone. It also allows staffers to monitor the performance of specific microscopes, track usage more closely for security purposes, bill more accurately for hours used, and create custom usage reports for outside research institutions – helpful tools for the evaluation of grant renewals.

“In today’s competitive environment, academic institutions need to operate more efficiently and be more accountable than ever to compete for research dollars and serve their many constituents – students, faculty, administrators and outside partners,” said Gottfried Sehringer, vice president of global marketing at Mendix. “The University of Pennsylvania’s Quattrone Nanofabrication Lab staff overhauled their processes in less than a week using the Mendix App Platform. We’re thrilled with the results they’ve experienced, and we’re looking forward to seeing how much more they can accomplish using our high-productivity, collaborative approach to building business applications.”

UPenn to Present its Mendix App at the 2014 UGIM Symposium

Clay will present a paper detailing the Quattrone Nanofabrication Lab’s groundbreaking system at the 2014 UGIM Symposium today at Harvard University. Clay’s talk is entitled “An Integrated Systems Network for the Control of Laboratory Wet Chemistry Process Work Stations.”

Laboratory Management App to Be Published in Mendix App Store

Based on the successful implementation at the University of Pennsylvania, plans are underway to make a version of the laboratory management app available to other universities and research facilities via the Mendix App Store.

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