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

2. Laboratory Inventory Control System
Develop
Troubleshoot
Improve
For the new lab, that is seeking accreditation, you may need to go through all of these steps. For labs that have been accredited, you may be somewhere in the middle. It took us 7 years of “tweaking” out inventory system to get where we are now. And this is just the system that is working for us now. As programs grow and shift, there is always the potential for a need for modifications and improvements!

3. Starting Place
Current Inventory System that is working for you! Determine if your current inventory system meets the requirements Fill in the gaps!
The best starting place is what is working for you now. Then take a close look at your requirements and identify any gaps. If your system is working very well, minimize the changes to start with, you probably meet more of the requirements than you think! If you label media with the name and date received, you don’t need to come up with a whole new alpha numeric system, just add a “1 or a 2” or an “a or an b” for when more than one item is received on a day and you have a unique alpha numeric system for identifying your media. Just be sure to write what you say and do what you write!

4. 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
Here is a translated, hopefully not over simplified, list of inventory requirements from ISO Most of them don’t apply to your inventory system per se but your entire purchasing system. Obviously these systems are closely related, and often handled in the same document. The only requirement in 4.6 that directly relates to inventory control systems is that you have a policy in place.

5. 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
These are additional requirements for a microbiology laboratory and where most of the specific requirements are found. These reflect good laboratory practices and the majority if not all of these requirements are probably already in place with your existing system.

6. 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
15-16 years ago my supervisor and microbiology mentor retired and I was tasked with ordering the supplies for the lab. For the media inventory, I was handed a card catalog. A little box with an index card for each media. On the card was the media name, the order date and the order amount. Very useful for determining how much to order the next time I ordered the media. But I had also been sent for intermediate Access training. So I wrote a database to track our media purchases. And when we were seeking accreditation for our lab, my neat little database grew and grew as we added to it to meet all of the requirements.

7. 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
We now had a system that fit our needs and met all of the requirements. Well, on paper anyway. I was sent to “advanced” access training and the first thing instructor said was that even after this class we should not be writing our own databases from scratch, we needed the next class, the Access programming class for that. Red flag! But hey, my little data base was working for us. The pitfall was that the database wasn’t secure so only people with formal Access training could enter data. But we had a system and we were meeting the requirements.

8. 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
We didn’t do formal troubleshooting, we just used the system. As new issues arose, we revised our policy and updated our system. And we found that the system that worked so well on a small scale was not working that well on a large scale.

9. This is a typical inventory record for our lab during at the end of that system. We really were not using the database to track our inventory we were using the margins of the database report to track our inventory. And we were having trouble meeting our requirements. We were firmly in the troubleshooting phase!

10. Troubleshoot Staff Observations – Corrective Actions Internal Audits
External Audits
Probably the biggest red flag was the look on new hires faces when I was explaining “this” (switch back to the previous slide) to them. But also we did have a good number of Corrective Actions for incomplete or incorrect inventory records. We were also seeing a lot of corrective actions resulting from our Internal Audits. And if your internal procedures are not catching your inventory discrepancies, not to worry!, the external auditors that we have had take a thorough look inventory records. And that is NOT when you want your inventory problems to surface, during an external audit.

11. Corrections Identify trends Missing opened date Incorrect lot number
For each corrective action we did a correction. But the vast majority of the time, the root cause analysis was just “oversight.” The lab staff was well trained and knew what to do but our system was not working. There were two areas where most of the deficiencies were occurring, Missing Opened Dates and Incorrectly Recorded Lot Numbers. So we set out to improve our system to prevent recurrences of these “oversights.”

12. 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
So, we have established that, even though, each individual deficiency was being attributed to an “oops,” the trends pointed to problems in our system. But our system worked for our analysts in the lab, we could not loose the “user friendly” aspect. For instance, we considered putting work stations in the lab so each item could be opened directly in the database at the time of use. This was quickly discounted as a viable solution for a few reasons Our lab is physically spread out so that would require multiple network drops and multiple work stations. 2. The time it takes to log in and navigate the database is a potential issue, especially if you are on ingredient 3 of 6 in a media preparation and have to stop, open a new bottle and resume The computer skill level of some technicians would make this a daunting task as well.
I do want to take a moment to note that, when we looked at the volume of inventory that was going through our system, the percentage of non-conforming records was very low, well, well below 1%. And there is going to be the stressful day when things aren’t going as planned or someone is not feeling well, or they just make a mistake and we felt our error rate was really attributed to these “one offs.” So a major focus on our improvement plan was to catch the sporadic mistakes in time to efficiently and accurately correct them!

13. 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)
We went to a four digit unique inventory number for all items. This not only made the item easy to trace back to the log in information, it eliminated the need to record that lot number over and over. It is much easier to get four digits, four large easy to see digits, correct than a tiny, long string of alpha numeric digits. We used an inventory log in sheet that any person with any technical level of expertise could use. The log-in sheets were located with the item in a tabbed binder so recording that opened date was easy. And we still kept everything in a database for reports and tracking purposes.

14. The “low tech” solution is what works best for us, now
The “low tech” solution is what works best for us, now. Every item received in the lab is immediately logged onto an Inventory Sheet. Anybody in the lab can do this and it can be done anywhere in the lab, no computer or network drop is needed. Then we have two sections so that the Chemistry section can meet all of their requirements and the microbiology section can meet all of their requirements.
This solved both of our trending problems. The lot number is recorded on one place, and then the four digit lab ID is used for all other references. In micro, we choose to still record expiration dates, but that is just a tool to help the microbiologist remember to check the date, we have quite a few short dated media, reagents and supplies. And we get a timely double check. The completed sheets are reviewed daily. Usually it is 1-3 sheets a day so it is a very manageable work load. If there is missing information, it can be accurately and efficiently retrieved from workbooks or the discarded media bottle. Normally the discrepancies and omissions are caught prior to submission for review.

16. Bonuses Expiration List
A place to record our kit QC results that is easy to locate
The inventory system doesn’t just need to meet the bare minimum requirements. Since the very first Access Database, we have run a report to give us all media and kits that are expiring in the next 30 days. This has helped greatly in two areas. We don’t run out of items because they expire on the shelf and we adjust our ordering amount to reduce the amount of waste due to expiration. When we updated to our LIMS database, we had to make sure we did not loose this! Widespread changes that improve one area but lose valuable functionality in other areas should be avoided.
We also use the inventory sheet to record the kit QC. Before we had this in a log book or in analysis workbooks and it was challenging to find during audits. This is an easy place for us to find the information.

17. 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
So this is what works for our lab. We were able to find solutions to our two major issues, lack of opened date and incorrectly copied lot number. Since we had determined that our rate of mistakes was very low, we built into our system a double check that caught mistakes when they still could be corrected. We were careful not to loose the parts that were working well (our 30 day expiration list and easy access to records) when we made our changes. We took advantage of the new system to solve other issues, like how to easily retrieve our QC data.

18. 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
No one size fits all, we only had to look as far as our chemistry section to get the four digit inventory number idea.

19. Thank You