Managing Laboratory Consumables

Since All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten first appeared in 1988, its simple, profound wisdom has inspired the world. Among its easily digested messages are a few gems that research scientists would do well to employ in their labs every day:
• Share everything
• Play fair
• Put things back where you found them
• CLEAN UP YOUR OWN MESS
• Don't take things that aren't yours

Makes sense, right? Following these simple steps makes even more sense after learning that many scientists and technicians have been found spending a disproportionate amount of their time doing things that add little or no value to their research.

If your lab is like most others involved in research, it spends a good share of its annual budget on consumables – everything from glassware, disposables, safety gear, gases, reagents, and media, to mention just a few. Staying on top of inventory for these items can pose a real challenge, especially when manual reconciliation processes are used to keep track of consumables from hundreds of different vendors with products located in multiple storage areas. That often leads to inaccurate reporting, frequent out-of-stock scenarios, supply hoarding among staffers, security and regulatory breaches, and a huge drain on resources in terms of time, money, and the wasted efforts of scientists trying to manage supply chain issues instead of conducting research.