Essential LIMS Features for Effective Lab Inventory Management
It can be difficult to determine the most important features when evaluating which Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) is best for your laboratory’s reagent management and consumable lab inventory management. The information that is essential for managing reagent usage is specific and different than the information for managing samples. As such, a general sample management system may not offer what you and your lab really need.
How can you determine which LIMS best suits your needs? To help answer this question, here are six important features you and your team should consider as essential for any system that manages the reagent and consumable inventory in your lab.
Watch our video on laboratory inventory management to see Lockbox LIMS in action!
Lab Inventory Management Feature #1: Tracking Reagent Lot and Expiration Dates
Perhaps the most important feature of a LIMS for lab inventory management is the system’s ability to track the lot and expiration dates for all your reagents. When your experiments and tests generate unexpected results, you want to check whether the reagents were expired, or if there is an issue with the lot of reagents. If you do not track this information for the reagents used in your system, these common troubleshooting methods are not possible.
If you determine that a specific reagent lot has a contamination, you must be able to easily see all the samples tested using that reagent. With that in mind, you have to ensure the LIMS you’re using can query all tested samples, simply and easily.
A robust lab inventory management system should also be able to flag expired reagents, and warn or even prevent you from using these reagents. This is not as important for research, but any clinical test reported to a patient could potentially be invalidated if the reagents used are expired.
Reagent lot and expiration dates are the most important information for tracking reagents or consumable inventory in your lab. Therefore, being able to track this information should be the highest priority when evaluating a LIMS for reagent management.
Lab Inventory Management Feature #2: Tracking the Location of Reagents in Your Lab
A good LIMS should keep highly specific details on the storage location of your reagents. This is particularly important if reagents are aliquoted, and you have many boxes full of reagent tubes. It can be difficult to write all relevant information on every single reagent aliquot tube—a LIMS can easily take the weight off your shoulders by tracking all relevant information on all reagent aliquots.
At minimum, reagent location details should include:
- label or barcode on each reagent tube/container
- the reagent’s storage box or container
- location of the box/container (e.g. freezer or refrigerator name)
- conditions in which the reagents are stored (e.g. -20 ˚C)
Lab Inventory Management Feature #3: Recording the Number of Freeze/Thaws
The ability to count and capture the number of freeze/thaw cycles for reagents can be incredibly important to understand your reagent integrity and quality. Many reagents can only undergo a handful of freeze/thaws before they should be discarded.
Single-use aliquots would obviate the need to record the number of freeze/thaws for reagents. However, aliquoting reagents is not always possible or feasible. For such reagents, recording the number of freeze/thaw cycles becomes even more important. Much like expired reagents, reagents that have undergone too many freeze/thaw cycles can be marked. The LIMS can provide a warning or prevent you from using such reagents.
Lab Inventory Management Feature #4: Calculating Reagent Usage to Know When Reagents are Running Low
There is nothing worse than running out of reagents halfway through testing a batch of samples. You face delays waiting for the reagents to arrive, and waste money and sample material for the sample tests you could not complete.
You can easily prevent the nightmare of running out of a vital reagent if your LIMS records your reagent usage and calculates the number of uses remaining. A valuable LIMS can even send you an email to let you know when it is time to reorder certain reagents. You will save a significant amount of time with this kind of functionality. It prevents you from having to manage inventory manually, rummaging through all your freezers and counting your reagent tubes to calculate your inventory.
This functionality, however, can also be rather tricky. How does a LIMS record reagent usage and calculate the remaining number of reagent uses? How do you define a “single use” of a regent? Is it a specific reagent volume (e.g. one µL of an enzyme), or a discrete usage of an item (e.g. one column from a package of 100 columns)?
The definition of a single “reagent use” can be challenging to define and, therefore, challenging to track. Furthermore, it is likely that different reagents will have different definitions. You will undoubtedly need to customize your LIMS to reflect how your lab needs to track reagent usage.
Lab Inventory Management Feature #5: Tracking Individual Kit Components or Ingredients Used to Prepare Reagents In Your Lab
When you have kits with many items, or you prepare reagents in house from “ingredient” reagents you ordered, reagent tracking can become complicated. Do you track each component in a kit separately? Do you track all the ingredients used to prepare a reagent?
An ideal LIMS should be able to track reagents that have a “hierarchy.” This entails tracking both the kit your lab ordered, and all the components that are part of the kit; or the reagent you prepared and all the ingredient reagents used to make it. In such cases, you likely need to have a “parent” record for the “higher-level” reagent in the hierarchy (e.g. the kit or the prepared reagent), and a “child” record for each reagent that is part of the kit/reagent (e.g. kit components or ingredient reagents).
Capturing reagent information in these parent-child relationships can be complicated. But it’s also a powerful way to record many layers of intricate data. Depending on the lab inventory management software you use, however, it can also be confusing to enter or review. If you track reagents to this level, you must make sure you can easily use the LIMS to enter and view this type of data.
Lab Inventory Management Feature #6: Tracking Reagent Suppliers, Storing Your Quotes and Invoices
It is also valuable to track the supplier for each reagent stored and tracked in your LIMS. This allows you to manage the quotes and invoices you receive for reagents. Why is this critical? Perhaps you cannot find the email discount you received on a quote for some pricey reagents. Maybe you have a disagreement with a vendor as to whether you paid for a reagent shipment. If you lose these valuable documents, you can waste a lot of time and money.
You should not have to deal with these types of administrative annoyances at your lab. Put bluntly, you are a scientist, not an accountant. By easily storing quotes and invoices in the LIMS, you’re letting the LIMS help you take on these tasks. With a central location for these key documents, you’ll no longer need to search endlessly through your email inbox or computer files to find them.
Summary: Essential LIMS Features When Using a LIMS for Reagent and Lab Inventory Management
Evaluating a LIMS for reagent management and consumable inventory management can be tricky. Some products offer plenty of potential features, many of which may not deliver any value. Consider the key features mentioned above as essential. Without them, you’ll be stuck with a an error-prone, inefficient lab inventory management system. You’ll also have frustrated users spending an excessive amount of time managing your reagent data.
In summary, there are six LIMS features most likely to be essential for reagent and lab inventory management. Your LIMS should give you the ability to easily do the following:
- Track the lot and expiration date of all your reagents.
- Track the location of all your reagents, including all your reagent aliquots.
- Record the number of freeze/thaw cycles for each reagent.
- Calculate the number of uses for each reagent, so you can appropriately re-order reagents when you need to.
- Track the individual components within a kit, or the individual “ingredients” used when preparing a reagent yourself.
- Track the suppliers for your reagents, and store the quotes and invoices for all reagent shipments.