Marathon Pacer is an inventory and procurement management program that provides tailored solutions for research laboratories to align lab operations, finance, and scientific teams. This program combines on-site support, off-site storage, procurement, and software to deliver best practices in inventory and procurement management. The article below takes a deeper look into one of the core features of the Marathon Pacer Program: on-site support, following Jake Frazier, a Customer Success Specialist throughout a day of work.
Last month, a member of the MarathonLS marketing team was able to shadow Jake in the field, watching as the day unfolded through a series of client interactions, troubleshooting, and inventory audits. Each Customer Success Specialist plays a pivotal role in ensuring consistent inventory flow, deadly accurate inventory audits, and lab upkeep on-site for Marathon Pacer clients.
8am: Drive into Boston
Depending on the day, Jake’s morning could start at various locations all around the Greater Boston area. Today’s schedule is for two clients in the city, so he heads right into his first stop in the Seaport District.
9am: Arrive at First Location
Once on-site, Jake enters the lobby, grabs a small keycard from his pocket, and scans into the lab area. Working with this client for nearly two years, he has become like a member of their team and therefore is granted the security clearances needed to enter. Aside from a few friendly hellos, no one bats an eye as Jake enters the lab area and heads toward the stockroom for his first project of the day. He sends the Lab Operations Manager a quick text to let him know he has arrived and is available if help is needed.
9:15am: Organize New Products
Jake enters the stockroom and immediately gets to work. He assesses the current state of the racks in the stockroom and replenishes the necessary bins with new products. After this, he continues to unbox new products and organize them accordingly.
9:45am: Enter the Lab and Evaluate Points of Use
Before entering the lab, Jake puts on gloves and a lab coat. The amount of protective clothing required varies from client to client, with some sites requiring Jake to wear full PPE before entering certain lab areas. Once in the lab, Jake is almost immediately stopped by a scientist. It is apparent that he is a well-known problem solver in this lab, and a trusted one too. The scientist asks Jake if he can have the team order a new product that is currently not supplied. In the fast-paced and demanding life sciences industry, every second is valuable. This is why accommodating pop-up requests is so important, enabling researchers maintain momentum in their critical work, rather than order products on their own and disrupting their progress.
Once the new product request is passed to the Marathon Pacer procurement team, Jake checks the various points of use around the laboratory. When evaluating the current stock of these areas, the following is assessed:
- What needs to be refilled? Determine what products are running low and record quantities needed to replenish from the stockroom.
- What products are being used the most? Identify which products are consistently nearing depletion in between visits. Depending on the client’s scope of work, the cadence between audits can vary. Recording which products are consumed at a faster rate helps Jake prepare for longer gaps between visits and ensures product never run out.
- What bins haven’t changed? Determine which products are not being used consistently or are consumed at a significantly slower rate. These data points are entered into the Marathon Pacer software, which will automatically alert MarathonLS’ procurement team to adjust the minimum and maximum reorder points for the specific product.
Before returning to the stockroom, Jake evaluates several lab benches to ensure that each scientist’s space is stocked with their preferred items. “After a few months of being here, some of the scientists asked if I could monitor the consumable levels at their benches. They really appreciate the extra step” Jake mentions, as he’s come to know several scientists and their individual product preferences and needs. Having these critical products consistently stocked at an arm’s length makes it even easier for scientists to focus on research.
10am: A Familiar Face
While exiting the lab, Jake is stopped by one of MarathonLS’ Field Service Engineers currently there to work on a same-day centrifuge repair. Because all Marathon Pacer clients also use the equipment service branch of the business, Jake mentions that he often bumps into members of the equipment service team in the field.
10:15am: Troubleshoot with Another Customer Success Specialist
Before resuming his inventory audit, Jake receives a phone call from another Customer Success Specialist at a site outside of the city. They wanted to get his opinion on the type of labels needed for a new point of use. Labeling each SKU across the lab with the unique product name, item description, and barcode not only clearly identifies products, but also provides a scanning system to accurately, and efficiently, track inventory. From generating product labels with barcodes to auditing inventory, Marathon Pacer manages the entire process, relieving researchers and lab managers of tedious duties associated with inventory management. All of the data collected through this system is readily available for clients to observe through their dashboard in the Marathon Pacer software.
10:30am: Collect Restock Products and Catch Up with Lab Operations
Now back in the stockroom, Jake begins to collect the necessary products to replenish the various points of use within the lab. While doing this, the Lab Operations Manager walks in to say hello and share updates about the state of the company.
Sometimes these updates are about pop-up orders that Jake can fulfill the same day, or about a new point of use that needs to be created, but today’s situation was unique. He enlightens him on an upcoming expansion the company has approaching, and Jake offers any additional help that is needed during this busy and exciting time.
Relocation services include equipment deinstallation, reinstallation, and functional testing, as well as ordering and restocking consumables, barcode labeling the new lab, and even help building out stockrooms, points of use, and high-density shelving if needed.
10:45am: Send Data to the Procurement Team
Following the restock, Jake downloads the stock count from the Marathon Pacer software to send to the procurement team to place any necessary replenishment orders. Customers have the ability to log into their dashboard and view historical and real-time inventory reports, inventory usage trends, cost center tracking, and so on. Providing live data, rather than just historical, is a powerful tool for operations and finance teams, enabling them to manage their consumables spend, and better forecast their consumables budget.
Before an order for new product is placed, the Marathon Pacer software will first cross reference what is available in the off-site warehouse. Off-site storage is available to all Marathon Pacer clients to store critical products, products with long lead times, or chemicals to stay within the allowable thresholds on-site. This extra storage provides peace of mind for operations and scientific teams knowing their critical products, even those with notoriously long lead times, are nearby and readily available. This allows them to spend their time focusing on research, rather than constantly monitoring inventory levels, following up on tracking, and ordering inadequate back up products.
11am: Restock the Floor and Check Chemical Inventory
Once the order for common stock is sent, Jake ventures to a separate area to audit the hazardous chemical inventory. Managing proper chemical levels is a constant balancing act that often falls on scientists and lab managers, pulling them away from core responsibilities. However, this does not need to be the case.
By leveraging MarathonLS’ local hazmat safe warehouse, clients can store their chemical safety stock, which helps minimize quantities kept on-site. While chemicals are off-site, they can monitor inventory levels through the Marathon Pacer software, maintaining transparency to their product. When on-site chemical levels begin to get low, a replacement order is placed, empties are returned, and new chemicals are replenished. These replenishments can be sent either the same or next day, if necessary, minimizing interruptions to workflow. This process ensures chemicals are properly stocked and within allowable thresholds according to their local safety standards.
11:30am: Clean Up and Dispose of Trash
Once all the necessary products and chemicals are stocked, Jake takes the remaining empty boxes back to the stockroom. Here, he appropriately files any packing slips and gathers any leftover packing materials, boxes, and other straggling pieces of waste, leaving the stockroom spotless and organized. Once collected, Jake takes all the waste down to the loading dock, where he disposes of it in the proper dumpsters.
11:45am: Wrap Up at First Location
Before leaving, he checks in once more with the Lab Operations Manager to provide them with updates from the day, any new product additions, upcoming shipments, and to see if there are any other ways he can help. After a few warm goodbyes, Jake heads to his next site.
12pm: Arrive at Second Location
Shooting across the Seaport, Jake reaches his second lab of the day just past noon. Upon entering, he must register for a daily security pass, however this process is seamless due to his frequency at the site.
12:15pm: Restock and Inventory Check
Once on-site, Jake gets right to work, evaluating which products go where and recording their new quantities. While restocking, a scientist approaches Jake and lets him know about an upcoming project that will require a much larger quantity of serological pipets than normally kept on hand. To accommodate this request, Jake adds a note in the Marathon Pacer software to temporarily adjust the maximum threshold of serological pipets, and the procurement team will later place this order accordingly. He then confirms with the researcher that there will be the proper number of serological pipets required to support this project, and there is no need to worry about running out.
Once the new products are organized, Jake records which items need to be restocked and makes his way to the safety stock room.
12:30pm: Moving Safety Stock to Stockroom and Stockroom to Floor
Some customers prefer to keep additional inventory on-site and replenish their main stockroom from there. Once an item in need of restocking is identified, Jake ensures that all locations on this pseudo-supply chain are filled accordingly. The process goes as follows:
- Product is needed at a point of use
- Product chosen from the stockroom, and brought to replenish point of use
- Stockroom level is recorded
- Product is moved from the safety stockroom to replenish the main stockroom levels
- An order for additional product is placed, if required
12:45pm: Moving from One Lab to Another
Some Marathon Pacer clients have multiple locations across the country. This client recently expanded into a second lab in Boston. As part of an ongoing project, Jake has been moving items from their primary loading dock to designated areas at each site to ensure all consumables make it to their correct location until the second lab is fully up and running. “Things are so fast paced here” says Jake, “These scientists are so busy with their own research, they don’t have the time to also be moving their consumables like they had originally planned to” he continues “I offered to help bring inventory from one location to the next, and there haven’t been any stockout issues since.” While he is always happy to help, it should be noted that the distance between these two labs is not short, and Jake will often make 2 to 3 trips per visit transporting inventory from one site to the other.
2pm: Finish Up and Return to the Office
Once all the products are in their proper locations, Jake meets with the Director of Lab Operations and the two catch up. With no immediate needs present, they say goodbye, and Jake makes his way back to the office. For the remainder of the day, he will work closely with the rest of the Marathon Pacer team to plan the next steps to support a client with the transformation of a former over-stock room into a brand-new tissue culture room.
After helping this client deplete their on-site overstock, the Lab Manager requested the Marathon Pacer team’s assistance with building out a functioning lab room. By utilizing the team to plan, purchase, build, and stock the new tissue culture room, the Lab Manager will be able to focus their efforts on a time-intensive data security backup project that was identified as a strategic objective to complete prior to year-end. In addition to relieving the Lab Manger of this project, clearing out a former over-stock room and transforming it into a tissue culture room allows more research to take place, pushing them closer to life-changing discoveries.
2:30pm Check in with Lab Operations
After wrapping up with Jake, the marketing team spoke with a few team members at the second location of the day to hear about their experience with the Marathon Pacer program. “Jake is like a member of our team” they said, “this is not like any other vendor partnership we have.” They expressed particular gratitude for the initiative Jake took in managing the transport of products between labs, noting that the expansion project would not be on target without his dedication and support.
If you are interested in how Marathon Pacer can support your lab, please contact [email protected].
