STS Time policy ....

[John Shott]

STS etch users:

I appreciate all of the feedback ... even the negative stuff.

Let me clarify a couple of things:

1. At the moment, we DON'T have the ability to change things for one piece of 
equipment.  What we institute applies to all.  While we are working on that 
capability, it is not close to release.

2. It was argued that an increase of the time horizon may improve things if 
part of the problem is a "feeding frenzy" that causes folks to reserve more 
time than they need or if some people seem to never get a reservaation during 
the horizon.  We understand, however, that the unpredictable nature of 
research makes it more difficult to plan far in advance.  It is probably also 
true that increasing the horizon probably doesn't help if it is continually 
and continuously full .... but that is something that we hope to learn.

What would be helpful, for a variety of reasons, is development of a set of 
mutually agreed upon rules for reservations for the stsetch.  What do you 
think would work?  The Raith community, for example, have discussed and 
adopted some rules related to the maximum duration of a single reservation and 
the maximum total duration of outstanding reservations in hopes of better 
sharing that scarce resource.  Not only will this help them to better share a 
scarce resource, but it will give them some experience in defining a set of 
reservation rules that seem to work for that particular piece of equipment ... 
that we can define and enforce when that capability is available.

What rules do you think will work for the stsetch?  While Chris makes a valid 
point that we will have a second stsetcher operational at some point, even 
when that happens, I anticipate that BOTH stsetchers will be high-demand 
tools. Additionally, I don't know when the second etcher will be up and 
qualified ... but it's been sitting there for quite a while.  So, I think that 
understanding what reservation rules will work is still a valid matter for 
discussion.

We can undo these changes, if the general consensus is that this is a failed 
experiment ... but it also seems that we really should come up with something 
better than the prevailing conditions for this very important tool.

Thanks,

John