Several years ago the Pfizer facility in Ann Arbor, MI closed its doors and gave away a lot of free items. I got to experience it first hand.
Background:
Pfizer donated much of the equipment and supplies via the MIED (Michigan Innovation Equipment Depot) which was created by Ann Arbor Spark.
The MIED helped distribute the materials to new startup biotech companies in Michigan Smart Zones.
I had a friend who was given access to these materials and asked me to come along as a “trained eye” to identify consumables that would be of use in a small start-up biotech.
It felt like an archaeological dig as we opened each box to see what treasures we had.
When the facility closed down each lab had its consumables boxed up separately. (petri dishes, forceps, tubes, gloves, pipettes and pitpette tips..etc.)
So each pile of boxes represented what was still in each individual lab when it was closed. Every time we went through another pile of boxed up consumables it didn’t look anything like the previous box. Why?
In essence every lab seemed to use different brands of gloves and pipettes. What I discovered was that each lab operated on its own.
Silo's are costly!!
It’s to be expected that different types of labs will have different needs however when it comes to gloves, lab coats and pipettes you don’t need a lot of choices.
I must have counted 25 to 30 different brands of gloves (not sizes…I mean brands) and 14 different manufacturers of hand held pipettes. To be honest there were brands I had never even heard of before.
I spoke to someone working at the distribution warehouse who used to work at the Pfizer Ann Arbor facility. He confirmed that each lab had the ability to purchase whatever supplies they needed.
These are some of the conclusions I’ve drawn:
- The facility must have been spending a lot of cash just to track all the supplier accounts
- The purchasing department must have been overburdened or required a huge staff to operate
- There seemed to be no standard put in place from where you should/could order from
- From a cash burn perspective they could have operated for several months on the supplies they had just laying around.
These days when I visit a company I keep close attention to what the supply room looks like.
As I walk through different labs or office areas I observe how much is sitting on shelves or still in boxes.
To me this is a KPI (Key Performance Indicator) of how they spend their monies and use their resources. It’s as good as any P&L statement to get a gauge on how well a company is being run.
Has anyone else had this same experience?
