How BIOSTrak helped a lab to reorganise storage and efficiently track all stored samples.

A local life sciences lab approached SampleArchive for help with better storage. Problems from sharing storage freezers across multiple bioscience research groups without proper access and inventory control had resulted in the freezers’ custodian losing track of their overall equipment usage and inventory control.

The lab ended up with less-than-optimum utilization rate for each of their ultra-low temperature freezers and ended up purchasing many more equipment with less-than-ideal insight on their storage usage profile.

Challenges

• Storage sharing among different research groups had resulted in inventory issues such as unaccounted for or misplaced products.
• Storage was also unoptimized as users were storing products wherever as long as it is most convenient for themselves.
• These less than conditions during usage further led to a longer time taken for product retrieval, putting other products in jeopardy due to potential temperature deviations whenever the storage is being accessed.

Solutions

• SampleArchive dispatched trained manpower resources to aid the client lab in reorganising and properly documented each product for storage.
• BIOSTrak was used for the inventory exercise. Products were reorganised, documented, scanned and logged in BIOSTrak. This ensured the accountability of each product.

Outcomes

• Sample retrieval is now swift and efficient, using BIOSTrak to locate the exact relevant stored products’ storage position even before the storage freezers were accessed.
• All samples are neatly stored and efficiently retrievable without jeopardising the integrity of the other samples sharing the same freezers.
• All products are accounted for with real-time status notifications from BIOSTrak, a web-based platform accessible 24×7 only to authorised lab personnel.
• The lab has made significant manpower and effort savings and efficiency gains with the new system implemented.