AN INTEGRATED CONCEPT OF AUTOMATED INSTRUMENT CONTROL, QUALITY ASSURANCE AND DATA REPORTING FOR DIOXIN/FURAN ANALYSIS

TACO (TArget Compound analysis software) is a newly designed software package that is used as common user interface for QUANTUM, a new high resolution target compound analyzer. It coordinates instrument control of the high resolution mass spectrometer, the gas chromatograph and the autosampler. It takes care about data acquisition, data evaluation and quantitation according to predefined methods. These methods also determine quality control parameters from the mass spectrometer and from the data evaluation. System performance parameters can be checked against method dependent limits and may stop batch processing via feedback control. TACO finally generates reports that integrate text and graphics in a flexible user defined format.