Within a laboratory facility, asset and inventory tracking is crucial for ensuring that all supplies, equipment, and instruments are properly managed and accounted for. The objective of a lab asset tracking software is to monitor the location, custody, movement, and maintenance of each instrument and piece of equipment. Easily make updates with a simple scan of a barcode.
Who has a need for laboratory asset management?
Medical asset tracking and laboratory asset management systems are a benefit to many life science industries including pharmaceutical, biomedical, and contract research companies. University and tech schools that offer programs in dental, nursing, pharmaceutical, paramedic, and medical laboratory science will use the same equipment, instruments and supplies in classroom training and can benefit from the same tracking solution. Other related industries include organizations that supply medical devices, clinics, hospitals, fire departments and ambulance service organizations. Laboratory assets management can include tracking any of these types of items:
- Equipment such as refrigerators, freezers, ovens, incubators, and sterilizers.
- Instruments such as meters, shakers, chillers, and microscopes.
- Gadgets such as gauges, regulators, controllers, valves, and vacuum pumps.
- Utensils such as pipettes, petri dishes, beakers, test tubes, timers, spatulas, trays, and bottles.
- Consumables such as gloves, syringes, masks, gauze, and tape.
- Chemicals, solvents, salts, reagents, acids, and metals are also often found in laboratory environments that can be included in tracking requirements.
How Can an Asset Tracking System help your laboratory operations?
Inventory Management
Supplies and reusable instruments are critical to laboratory’s efficiency. Making sure critical supplies such as bags, syringes, tubes, masks, and gloves are kept restocked will help eliminate downtime in the lab. Track expire dates. Set stock and reorder points to manage stock levels that won’t leave you waiting for vendor shipments. Reduce waste and avoid downtime for a big impact to reducing costs.
Instrument and Equipment Management
Having optimal working equipment and instruments is key to lab operations. Setting up schedules for maintenance and calibration will increase the lifespan of lab instruments and ensure quality results. Know location and custodian assignee for high-expense equipment. Use barcode asset tags as a theft deterrent and to add accountability. Adding the ability to reserve specialized instruments and equipment will keep projects on schedule.
Compliance Management
Meet legal and regulatory compliance. Asset and inventory tracking solutions will provide a full audit history for everything from moves, transfers, status updates, and maintenance activities. Track who completed the transactions related to instruments, equipment, and supplies. For organizations that complete contract work, your customers will gain confidence know you have a reliable tracking system in place keeping you efficient and organized.
Key Benefits to Inventory and Laboratory Asset Tracking
Increase Efficiency
Remove wasted time searching for a specialized instrument needed to complete your project or test. Eliminate downtime due to low supply levels or missing equipment. By adding a system to track everything from instruments, equipment, and supply items, you will gain efficiency and reduce operational costs. Return the focus of your lab to the work that needs to be done instead of tracking down the items needed.
Replace paper-based tracking and outdated spreadsheets.
If your lab operation still uses paper-based forms or spreadsheets, it is time to add a system to keep the status, location, and details of the items critical to your operations up to date. Both spreadsheets and paper-based forms are inefficient. Filling out forms or writing down the items you are taking adds time. Spreadsheets are often updated long after changes were made, making them unreliable. Replacing these tracking options with a solution designed for tracking items critical to your lab operations will ensure the data stays reliable. A quick scan of a barcode will be more efficient and effective than filling out a form to meet your tracking needs.
Add Accountability
Extend ownership, accountability, and visibility across your organization. Adding a tracking system will provide the visibility needed to know where to find instruments and equipment needed to complete the tasks to be done. Adding custody assignments and logging will add accountability across the organization. Adding restock and maintenance functionality will give everyone confidence that operations will run smoothly.
Three Ways to Start Tracking your Assets & Inventory
- One of the key features of putting a tracking solution in place is to add barcode technology. Invest in barcoded asset tags to tag the equipment and instruments you need to track.
- Define an identification strategy (such as using a part number, SKU, or model number) for utensils and consumables that won’t require serialization or a unique ID assignment. (These might be spatulas, beakers, test tubes, safety glasses, gloves, etc.)
- Establish identification of the areas where assets and supplies will be stored and used. It can be as simple as a room number or more specific such as locations on a shelf or cabinet. Location barcode labels can be printed for easy scanning for moves or counts.
Putting these three things in place will set you up with a good foundation to putting in a tracking solution.
About PanatrackerST
PanatrackerST is an effective solution for tracking assets and items. Applied to life science organizations with laboratory operations, PanatrackerST offers the ability to:
- Check Out instruments, equipment, and laptops, to add accountability and visibility to staff, students, or contractors.
- Track equipment status. Know what is available and in-service to use and know what is out-of-service due to maintenance requirements.
- Complete moves between labs for shared equipment such as microscopes or specialized instruments. Add visibility and confidence to where to find items anytime.
- Manage stockrooms for consumables and supplies such gloves, bags, sealing films, syringes, filters, masks, wipes. Set restock levels for lab and work areas and complete restock activities.
- Setup maintenance schedules and complete maintenance activities to keep your instruments and equipment in tip-top order.
- Setup projects to manage contract work. Record chemicals and ingredients. Capture billable consumables used.
- Complete periodic validation that the instruments and equipment is still in the location and custody expected.
Panatrack has years of experience tracking items critical organizations just like yours. Capture transactions anywhere – from your computer, laptop, phone, or mobile device. We deliver more than just software; we deliver a solution that will add efficiency and visibility to your operations.
Learn more about all the features available in PanatrackerST by visiting Panatracker for Lab and Medical Assets and Supplies, or schedule a call with one of our tracking experts.
