Customer Service Testimonials for Electron
Microscope Service and Support

Researchers at the new cryo-EM facility at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio employ a Thermo Scientific Glacios Cryo-TEM in their mission to develop better treatments for advanced prostate cancer.

With the Glacios Cryo-TEM outfitted with a Falcon 4 Direct Electron Detector and a Selectris Imaging Filter, researchers can obtain 2.2 Å structures of previously unknown complexes.

“So, we have this great, ongoing relationship with Thermo [Fisher Scientific]. They helped us with the installation. They’re helping us now with consultation and troubleshooting. And we’re excited to keep that relationship strong, so that we can see where all the technologies will take us in the future.” – Elizabeth Wasmuth

The Linus Pauling Science Center at Oregon State University, as the electron microscopy facility for students, supports a broad array of research including materials science, geology, veterinary medicine, human medicine, and plant science. Service contracts from Thermo Fisher Scientific are relied upon by researchers to support their four instruments and keep their lab running.

They take advantage of the 48-hour response time and RAPID screen-sharing capabilities to get support quickly and for our team of experts to troubleshoot and support their diverse tools, techniques, and workflows.

“Almost every day, I see a student come in who is doing something I’ve never heard about. Every day is an opportunity to learn something new. So, I rely on the service engineers to support me with things I don’t have the knowledge or capabilities to do.” - Teresa Sawyer

For their brand-new cryo-EM facility, the Southern University of Science and Technology (Shenzen, China) needed a wide range of support, from installation to publication. Our Accelerate service provides preventive maintenance options to discover problems in the early stages before they hinder data collection. The monitoring system discovers problems and gets an engineer on-site early to fix issues.

“When I purchased a service contract with Thermo Fisher, it was for the long-term collaboration because of the trust and quality of service. I think it is a very cost-efficient way to look after the microscopes. These are very complex instruments; we need a professional person to look after a professional instrument.”  - Peiyi Wang

Maximizing productivity becomes more challenging when you have multiple instruments and users. Connected Care services generates alarms and alerts when the stage collides with electrically grounded parts of the system. For one customer, we found these alarms were resulting from loading samples with various thicknesses based on a single operation recipe. Additional user training and a new workflow increased proficiency and decreased these alarms. The parts were also inspected to see what could be tightened to maximize the space, thus reducing the chance of the stage touching the other parts and triggering alarms.

Proactively planning service events so they can be completed during less busy times will increase productivity and avoid disruptions during key processes. With the tools connected to our system remote monitoring, preventive action maintenance calls are generated when predictive algorithms detect abnormalities or inconsistencies that require further investigation or when they detect that system parameters have begun to drift out of spec. Preventive action maintenance calls can provide root cause analysis and recommendation, so field service team members are more prepared for the service call with actionable data and needed parts. These calls also allow preventive and corrective maintenance calls to be combined for a more efficient schedule.

Working with our customer over seven months, we were able to move service calls from unscheduled to scheduled visits during less busy times, reducing unscheduled maintenance calls by 45%. This schedule saved 14 hours by combining service calls when possible and saved 6 hours by having the necessary parts and service plan determined prior to the service visit.

Access to utilization data can inform you when schedules and shifts need to be adjusted to be more productive. Instead of just looking at each tool and maximizing the utilization time each day, our Customer Success Manager reviewed each work week with the customer to determine the gaps between peak times and less busy times. By minimizing the gaps, they flattened the utilization curve to reduce the gap by 3% in one building and increased the overall output by 1%.