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| Implementing Inventory Tracking | ||
| Companies
with LIMS often track inventories related to Stability and the inventory
in the chambers, or other items, such as reagents and GC columns. Although tracking inventory within LIMS has not been required in even half the LIMS projects I’ve worked on, it is a common request and a high priority in some clients’ implementation. Usually, inventory-tracking functionality is custom-built for the project, as opposed to relying on the out-of-the-box software functionality to provide it. To plan to implement inventory tracking within LIMS, ask the following questions at the start: Question: How do you establish your inventory total? Discussion: In some cases, all items that support the particular inventory are entered into LIMS, and LIMS calculates the total. Other strategies require the total to be entered into LIMS with the supporting items required to meet that total, or to consider that anything less than the total of the remaining inventory as extra material. Question: What does inventory cover? Discussion: The most likely candidate for inventory tracking is Stability, as its setup and maintenance is fairly structured and its structure is well defined. Reagent inventory is sometimes managed within LIMS as are GC or HPLC columns. Small items that are used in quantities that do not involve counting or measuring are usually left out of the LIMS strategy. Question: How is inventory to be tracked? Discussion: Entering the initial inventory is a separate issue from actually tracking it. So, the question revolves around updating inventory. With regard to Stability, it is common to create programs that maintain the actual inventory movements based on the part of the process the material is going through (i.e., the inventory is moved as the inventory is added to the chambers, taken out for pulls, disposed of, etc.). Other types of inventory are often managed by user entry (i.e., the user makes occasional adjustments, although this is entirely dependent on the purpose and use of the item. Question: What happens when the process is changed? Discussion: For example, in Stability, additional testing may require a larger-than planned pull of material. How will this be handled? Can it be automatically calculated? Will the user make a manual adjustment? What will the overall effect of the change be? These questions must be answered in order to determine how the process changes are managed. Question: What if the system’s inventory gets out-of-balance? Discussion: If the strategy is based mainly on user entry, or if the strategy provides the opportunity for a number of exceptions, it’s possible and probable that the numbers will get out-of-sync with the actual inventory. In some systems, the programs are elaborate enough that this won’t happen with the automated portions. However, in cases where the possibility exists, one of the simplest ways to verify inventory is through a report. Reports can be created to show types of items or particular stability studies, for example, and the user can match the numbers on the report to what is in inventory. Depending on the strategy used, the report can show where the planned inventory differs from the actual inventory. Question: What information needs to be present to properly track inventory? Discussion: Using Stability inventory as an example because the process goes through a number of steps, different information might be available at different points in the process and might need to be changed at specific points, as well. Keeping track of which fields to change at what point needs to be mapped out to understand how multi-step processes need to be kept up-to-date. Question: Are amounts or numbers tracked? Discussion: Where items are tracked by numbers, for example, 10 items are put into the system and are taken out by count (e.g., 3 items are removed, or 1 item is removed, with what is removed always tracked by a count), the tracking is straightforward. Where inventory becomes complex is when the units of measure change between the amount stored and the amount taken out of inventory. Another twist is bulk dispensing where, for example, 10-500ml bottles are entered into inventory and opened one-by-one. Then, as the first one is opened, the inventory of the particular bottle is decremented by volume and the actual count of bottles is decremented at the same time. In the end, it’s not that creating a process to track inventory is not as difficult as much as it is tedious. This is one area of implementation that requires organization and attention to detail more than anything else. This handful of questions can get you started on the task, although additional questions always arise as the task proceeds. |
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