Best Practices for Inventory Control Patricia Hanson Biological Administrator I Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services Food Microbiology Laboratory

Laboratory Inventory Control System  Develop  Troubleshoot  Improve

Starting Place Current Inventory System that is working for you! Determine if your current inventory system meets the requirements Fill in the gaps!

ISO 4.6 Requirements Have a policy for receipt and storage Ensure items are OK before use Detailed purchasing documents with technical approval Evaluate suppliers

Appendix B: Food Microbiology Identification scheme for media (alpha numeric) Records to include name, lot number, lab ID, date received, date opened, date prepared for QC, expiration date, responsible person Dehydrated media is labeled with lab ID, name, and date approved

From Card Catalog to a Database…. and Beyond Card Catalog system did not meet requirements Access Database met most of the criteria Extra fields were added to the Access Database to meet all of the requirements Extra items were added to the Access Database to include all of our kits and reagents

2007 System in Writing Items logged into Access Database Report printed Opened and Discard date recorded on Report Database updated periodically and when new items were received

2007 System in Action Items logged into Access Database, if there was time, if not they were written on the printed report Report printed grew to 23 pages when all the items were finally added Opened and Discard date recorded on Report Database updated periodically, some items were discarded before ever going into the database

Troubleshoot Staff Observations – Corrective Actions Internal Audits External Audits

Corrections Identify trends Missing opened date Incorrect lot number

Improve Each individual deficiency was an oversight - but the trend pointed to a system wide problem Had to keep it user friendly, the staff needed to do their job as microbiologists not just track the inventory Mistakes really were not widespread, but even sporadic mistakes are non-conformances Catch the mistakes in time to correct them

What We Did 4 (soon to be 5) digit inventory number Inventory Log in Sheet Co-located with the inventory item Updated in Database (it used to be Access but we have since migrated to our LIMS)

Bonuses Expiration List A place to record our kit QC results that is easy to locate

This is what worked for One Lab User friendly - unique inventory number is easy to record User friendly - items can quickly be logged into the lab by any person from any section User friendly - located near where the work takes place, easy to find forms in tabbed binder Timely review - we can catch missing information before an internal (or external!!) audits Timely review - we can catch missing information when we can still quickly and accurately recover it

Items to Consider There is no one size fits all system but look at other systems for ideas The physical layout of the lab The access to technology and the technical abilities of the lab staff Volume of testing Timely review