How Much Should One Be Spending on Lab Supplies?

What do academic institutions, hospitals and biotech companies all have in common? They all have labs. They all need to supply their labs with equipment and consumables. But how much should you budget or plan for? How does one know how much is too much? Are funds being properly allocated? If you are asking yourself these questions, then, like most of the rest of us, you have a budget. Now, that’s not a bad thing, having a budget, knowing what you can and cannot spend, and you may be a whiz at balancing your personal checkbook every month, but that does not necessarily mean that when it comes to balancing the budget in your lab everything is peaches and cream. Having a budget is a great start, staying on that budget, however, as you run the day to day operations of your lab, can be a little tricky. Below is a list of the average (in percentages) of what 147 different labs around the country spent their budgets on in 2012.

• 27% Instruments
• 18% General lab supplies
• 16% Life science reagents and kits
• 16% Chemicals
• 13% Equipment
• 6% Plasticware
• 5% Glassware

One way to efficiently manage your budget is a trick known as “calendarization.” This allows you to budget supplies on a regular monthly basis. Simply take your annual supplies in all categories and divide by 12. It can also be a very effective way to track any over or underspending during an given month for the year to date.

Five Common Frustrations in the Lab

You work in a lab. Everyday. Maybe you’re in a medical lab, testing specimens on a daily basis. Or a modern research lab, perhaps even a teaching lab. Aside from frustrations such as experiments that fail, results that cannot be reproduced or unexplainable data, there are other frustrations that can occur when you find yourself in the position of not just working in, but managing a lab.

• Managing Inventory in General. Regardless of the scientific discipline of your lab, labs in general often have a difficult time organizing inventory and keeping it current. How does your lab keep track of new orders in relation to existing inventory? An Excel spreadsheet? Or maybe an inter-lab software program?
• Communal Buffers and Solutions. Often, to save money, labs will make their own stock of agar plates, cell culture media and other consumables. Lack of communication in the lab can create shortages in stock, lack of clear guidelines about who is responsible for making more, as well as problems with expiration dates and quality control testing of stock to ensure viability.
• Depleted Supplies and Special Orders. It is frustrating to not have command over how many materials your lab has in stock and when it is time to reorder. Sometimes, the first a manager hears of a need for a particular reagent is when it was needed yesterday! Again, lab communication is an integral part of maintaining a constant supply of reagents and specimens, particularly if a sample was obtained through collaboration or a special order.
• Life Cycles and Expiration Dates. An especially big concern for life science labs, where almost all daily reagents, buffers and enzymes must be up to date in order to produce optimal results. Ideally, it would be great to be able to pair up expiration dates with general inventory management, so that locating a specimen or reagent would also tell you that it is current. Knowing that an expiration date is imminent for a necessary component, you could easily reorder it in time. Tracking life cycles of lab chemicals and other reagents also includes waste and disposal, which can be cumbersome as well as dangerous if they are allowed to become expired and unused.
• Non-Adherence to Lab Databases. Logically, all of the frustrations described above can be done away with by implementing a lab wide management system. However, it can be difficult to enforce a uniform participation, because, after all, we are just humans. A large number of those humans who happen to be researchers feel that their labs are not being efficiently managed. If your lab runs on precious grant money, no one wants to see it frittered away due to an inefficient system or have to deal with angry scientists, frustrated grad students or postdocs who cannot get experiments done or papers published in a timely manner.

Why Does My Lab Need Drying Racks?

Is your lab one of the thousands of classroom labs across the country?  Or perhaps it is a forensic science lab?  Is it a medical lab, performing vital tests on a daily basis? Regardless of the role your lab plays, we can all agree that it will always need clean equipment to properly perform and yield accurate results.  Clean lab instruments mean no cross contamination, as well as helping to preserve the life of expensive equipment.  For these reasons, drying racks are an indispensable and necessary piece of equipment.  Beakers and test tubes, among other lab equipment, are fragile items and care should always be taken whether they are being used for experiments or tests, whether they are being washed or dried.  Leaving them on a counter or tabletop to dry is inefficient, as well as taking up needed space and more importantly, leave them vulnerable to breakage.  With a drying rack, your equipment stays out of the way until it is needed, it dries in a more timely manner and because a drying rack allows you to hang delicate instruments, they are safe from potential accidents.  

Consider what type of drying rack will best suit the needs of your lab. A drying rack made from epoxy resin, or phenolic resin?   Consider an acrylic rack, which is impact resistant and also has chemical resistant properties. A stainless steel drying rack is by far the most durable tough and will never rust. The durability and functionality of drying racks in your lab should not be overlooked. 

Stretch Your Lab Budget With These Three Simple Tips:

1.     Ask for samples.  This is a great way to reduce costs and ensure that you have the product that will meet the needs that you acquired it for.  Nobody wants to buy even a small quantity of supplies, let alone a large amount, only to find it is not going to fill the bill. Blackland Manufacturing will gladly accommodate your request for samples, because it will often times lead to sales.  The best part of asking for samples is that they are usually free.  Who doesn’t like free?

2.     Use free software.  Again with the free, woohoo.  There plenty of software products out there to make running and operating a lab smoother than a fresh jar of Skippy.  Could you use help logging data?  There’s a free software program for that.  How about inventory?  Yup, free software.  Lab management software that will allow you to request quotes, manage documents, and more?! Yessiree.  

3.     Buy in bulk.  Ok, this one isn’t free, but it will help your budget nonetheless.  Products that are often in use and that will be used for an indefinite amount of time should always be purchased in bulk.  If your lab and/or storage space is at a premium, this could present a problem. However, lab supply stores offer standing order programs that allow you to make blanket purchases but only receive what you need when you need it.  Viola!  Storage problem solved. If you find that you regularly need to be restocked on a monthly basis, suppliers will ship them to you on that basis.